Bishop Briggs Steals The Show At Mr. Eurosonic Awards

Gideon Gottfried – Bishop Briggs
Reminded everyone at the ceremony why the live business is such an exciting field to work in

For the 10th time, the European Festival Awards were presented on opening night of Eurosonic Noorderslag in Groningen, Holland, Jan. 16. Two people stole the show: Bishop Briggs, who performed live, and Mr. Eurosonic himself,  Peter Smidt, the founder of ESNS, who received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

ESNS founder Peter Smidt announced that he would be stepping down as creative director of the event prior to this year’s edition. ILMC’s Greg Parmley, who presented the award, described Smidt as probably the most important promoter of European music of his generation.

An accurate assessment, seeing that the European Talent Exchange Program ETEP, just one of Smidt’s ideas to increase the circulation of European talent in Europe, provides hundreds of artists with festival gigs each year.

Humble as always, Smidt accepted the award, expressing his happiness at how far ESNS has come from its beginnings in 1986, when Smidt organized a showdown between Dutch and Belgian bands: Holland-Belgium, later renamed to Noorderslag.

Smidt talks about these early beginnings and the milestones that led to ESNS becoming one of Europe’s leading events for new talent and business meetings in this video interview with Pollstar.

In it, he also explained what the name Noorderslag means, I why British radio hosts were reluctant to pronounce the name on the air.

Gideon Gottfried – Peter Smidt
The founder of Eurosonic Noorderslag and one of the most important European promoters of his generation

The night’s remaining winners are listed below. They include the German Wacken Open Air, which won the Best Major Festival award, as well as Northside Festival (Denmark) and Artmania Festival (Romania) in the medium and small categories, respectively.

CAA’s Mike Greek won the Agent of the Year award, and picked it up in person, while Mojo, Live Nation’s business in the Netherlands, was crowned Promoter of the Year.

The night’s show-stopping moment came from Bishop Briggs. The British singer owned the stage, which can be quite a challenge at music industry gatherings, where the crowd is usually subdued. But Briggs jogged on stage, warmed up like a boxer, and performed her single “River” like she was rocking a live festival audience.

Briggs was also one of the winners at the newly created Music Moves Europe Talent Awards (MME Awards), where she won the public choice award in the pop category.

The other public choice winners were Pip Blom from the Netherlands (rock), Stelartronic from Austria (electronic), Rosalía from Spain (RnB/Urban), Reykjavíkurdætur from Iceland (hip hop/rap), and Albin Lee Meldau from Sweden (singer/songwriter).

The MME Awards are co-funded by the European Commission and replaced the European Border Breaker Awards (EBBA). The awards are presented by ESNS and Reeperbahn Festival, in cooperation with Yourope, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Independent Music Companies Association (IMPALA), International Music Managers Forum (IMMF), Liveurope, Live DMA, European Music Exporters Exchange (EMEE) and Digital Music Europe (DME).

Gideon Gottfried – Pohoda Festival
Both the festival and its founder Michal Kascak received an award

European Festival Awards 2019 nominees and winners: