Koopmans For Eurosonic Keynote

He was also to speak at the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg Sept. 25-28, which is a short walk from the FKP Scorpio chief’s offices at Gross Elbstrasse.

There he’ll join Eric van Eerdenburg from Lowlands Festival in The Netherlands and Eric van Eerdenburg and Baris Basaran from Pozitif Live in Turkey to talk about the 2013 outdoor season.

Although his festival empire now stretches through Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and The Netherlands, Koopmans’ career as a promoter is firmly rooted in Hamburg.

In the early ’80s, he’d balanced freelance promoting with his day job as a factory floor manager, before moving on to become talent buyer for Hamburg clubs including Grosse Freiheit 36 and The Docks, both in the St. Pauli district of the city where Reeperbahn Festival is held.

He started FKP Scorpio Konzertproduktionen as an agency in 1990, then grew it to an international promoting business.

In March, Koopmans was honoured with the Arthur Award as the “Promoter’s Promoter” at the 25th International Live Music Conference (ILMC) in London.

Apart from running more than a dozen festivals, the company also acts as either national or local promoter for many major acts, including the Eagles, Robbie Williams, and Bruce Springsteen.

While the Reeperbahn panel is about how festival promoters fared during the summer, at Eurosonic Koopmans will likely get questioned on his decades or so of music business history. Eurosonic-Noorderslag is in Groningen, The Netherlands, Jan. 15-18.