The summer music festival season got a lot greener last week with the announcement of GreenNote, a two-day acoustic music festival set to take place at Myrtle Edwards Park in July.
The festival aims to promote environmental awareness with a city-dwelling music festival crowd. GreenNote will be doing this by incorporating the message of green energy and sustainability throughout the festival grounds. There will be food booths that feature sustainable meats and locally sourced entrees, bike valets to encourage non-vehicle transportation to the festival, gardening workshops, and other green-friendly events. The decision to feature exclusively acoustic music was made intentionally in order to cut down on electricity usage; the electricity that is used will be powered by biodiesel generators.
While the environmentally friendly message will be loud and clear, the festival'ês focus will be on music. Around 100 acts are expected to perform across three stages during the festival.
'êGreenNote is first and foremost a music festival, but in the months leading up to the event and during GreenNote'ês inaugural weekend, we want people to not simply come to listen to music, but to learn about how they can cultivate lives that have less impact on the environment,'ê Egan Orion, the festival'ês director said. 'êThere are lots of simple ways in our daily lives that we can make a difference, and if each one of the thousands of people who come to GreenNote does just one simple thing to be greener, it'êll make a huge impact on our environment.'ê
GreenNote is being put on by One Degree Events, which produces PrideFest at Seattle Center, along with New Growth Event Solutions, the company that produces the Bite of Seattle, the Taste of Tacoma and other local festivals. According to GreenNote organizers, it will be the summer'ês only music festival to take place along the downtown waterfront this year and attendance is expected to be around 10,000 people per day.
The festival will join an already busy summer music-festival season for the city, including the Northwest Folklife Festival in May, the Georgetown Music Festival in June, the Capitol Hill Block Party in late July and Bumbershoot on Labor Day weekend. Ticket prices and performers have yet to be announced, though the bulk of the performers are expected to be local. Most of the city'ês already established festivals secure local acts well in advance so it might be tough to get top-notch local talent. Also, when you factor in blackout periods that prohibit festival acts from playing local shows within a few weeks of a festival, this could mean that national, not local, talent will likely be the draw for music fans.
GreenNote will take place from 11 am to 9 pm July 24-25. Admission is free until 6 p.m. each day. After 6 p.m. a ticketed fundraising concert for environmental nonprofits, featuring headlining national talent, will take place at the main stage area, which will have a capacity of 4,000. Beneficiaries for the event will be announced in April.
