Welcome back to Festival Fever! This month we take you to sunny Miami, Florida, one of the party capitals of the world and home to one of the world’s dance mu- sic Mecca’s – Ultra Music Festival. Taking place at the 32-acre BayFront Park yet again, this famous festival features countless international headliners spread across seven uniquely designed stages. Originally a one day event, Ultra’s inaugural edition took place as a closing event for the Winter Music Conference and was a great success. The conference provided Ultra with ad- ditional exposure and helped trigger the unbelievable growth seen over the past 14 years. During the inau- gural edition back in 1999, fans gathered on the sands of beautiful South Beach and let loose to the sounds of Rabbit in the Moon and DJ Baby Anne “The Bass Queen”. The unprecedented six days of Ultra will allow for nearly every fan favorite in dance music a chance to display their skills for a crowd upwards of 100,000 fans, twice in most cases. During the weekends of March 15-17 and March 22-24, the beautiful Bayfront Park will be overloaded with extravagant costumes and sexy festival goers as the fifteenth edition of this monumental festival goes down.
Founded by business partners Russell Faibisch and Alex Ormes in 1999, it has since flourished into a premier outdoor electronic music event as well as one of the top-grossing festivals in the United States. Ultra won “Best Music Event” by the International Dance Music Awards six consecutive years, from 2005 to 2011. Celebrating its 15 year anniversary this year, Ultra is continually pushing the envelope and helping grow our industry. This epic festival happens to coincide with perhaps one of the most publicized annual music gathering in the world. Now in its twenty eighth year, the Winter Music Conference is a ten day long industry event like no other and complements Ultra perfectly. WMC and the Miami Music Week attracts thousands of artists and industry delegates from around the world and provides amazing opportunities to create new partnerships.
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More than 100,000 event attendees flood South Beach for a concentrated schedule of more than 500 parties, seminars and workshops. This year WMC runs from March 15-24 and features parties with many of the biggest DJs in the world on the decks.
The Ultra lineups for all stages have been announced and are quite simply out of this world. Not only is Deadmau5 making his well anticipated return to Miami after being kept off the lineup last year, but perhaps making bigger headlines is Swedish House Mafia’s return to the festival. Sebastian, Steve and Axwell are scheduled in the primetime slot on opening night as well as the final day of the festival which is being billed as their final performance together, that is until One More Tour gets announced. The mega structure will be known as the Carl Cox and Friends Arena for four of the six days with sets from some of the heavi- est hitters in the tech world; Jamie Jones, Ritchie Hawtin, Loco Dice, Umek, Sven Vath, Nicole Moudaber and John Digweed are all to set to play. Keeping with tradition, the Mega Structure will be transformed into the “A State Of Trance” tent and Armin van Buuren will be broadcasting an episode of his ever so popular ASOT 600 live on closing day with Paul van Dyk, Ferry Corsten, Above & Beyond, Markus Schulz and Dash Berlin. The list of huge DJs in the lineup is thoroughly impressive as always and includes all the titans of big room festival anthems, Tiesto, David Guetta, Afrojack, Avicii, Eric Prdydz, Kaskade, Fatboy Slim, Sander van Doorn, Laidback Luke, Fedde Le Grand, Calvin Harris, Hardwell, and Dirty South are all scheduled to play the over-the-top Main Stage, and that’s only naming a few. This year Ultra is particularly proud to announce a number of top live acts which include a number of hip hop performers, inviting a mix of old and new school rappers including Snoop Dogg, Azealia Banks and The Weeknd to play the same stage that will feature Major Lazer and Krewella.
The third phase of the lineup was recently announced www.djmag.ca
and included the depth of talent for the Toolroom Knights Arena on the UMF Radio Stage both Sundays. Sander Kleinenberg, Chus & Ceballos, Prok & Fitch, Pirupa, Funkagenda, Stefano Noferini, and Wally Lopez are all set to join the king of Toolroom himself, Mark Knight.
New this year will be Surface, a newly conceptualized arena held each Sunday of the festival at the Bayfront Stage. This venerable who’s who of the underground scene will feature sets from Seth Troxler, Art Depart- ment, Claude VonStroke, Maceo Plex, Guy Gerber, Damian Lazarus, Lee Foss, Magda and many more. Also worth mentioning is the spot-on underground programming for the Bayfront Stage on opening Friday with Riotgear, Elio Riso, Josh Wink, Shaded, Carlo Lio and Dubfire on the poster.