A wide variety of Hungary related programmes took place at the 31st edition of one of Europe’s most relevant music showcase events, the Eurosonic music conference and festival held in Groningen, the Netherlands.
Eurosonic hosted almost 4,000 representatives of the European music scene, among them around 400 festival managers. Following the conference sessions tens of thousands of festivalgoers could listen to approximately 300 concerts by talented young musicians from 33 countries.
Between 11-14 January, three Hungarian bands, winner of the Nagy-Szín-Pad talent show speed folk freak punk Bohemian Betyars, Fran Palermo, self-styled as a jungle rock’n’roll band and Vera Jónás Experiment playing alternative rock entered the stage at the renowned Dutch Eurosonic festival. Next to the excellent bands, the Hungarian music scene was represented in Groningen by a large delegation consisting of musicians, record companies, producers, festival managers and music journalists in the sign of the HOTS (Hungarian Oncoming Tunes) campaign. The Hungarian presence had been made possible by the National Cultural Fund of Hungary and sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Hungary’s three-times award-winning Sziget festival was chosen as the Artists’ Favourite Festival at the award ceremony of the European Festival Awards 2016, held on the first day of Eurosonic. The work of Sziget’s international programme manager, Daniel Panaitescu was recognised with a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award.
On 12 January the Hungarian pop music scene introduced itself to the European professional audience at a packed networking event. The exciting festival atmosphere is captured on the video that was shot by director Csaba Bogádi for the YouTube channel of the Embassy of Hungary in The Hague.