Empire Entertainment Delivers Another Year of Talent for the Rochester MusicFest

For the 2nd consecutive year, Empire Entertainment booked and produced another stellar music lineup for the Rochester MusicFest. The MusicFest is a City of Rochester-sponsored event and thus has a limited budget. Each year it is an enormous challenge to bring national level talent to this festival within the budget that is allocated while also trying to position the festival as an important part of the Summer tours for these artists. Through Empire's relationships with artists and their agents, we were able to produce the best possible lineup for the best possible price across the board.

This year, under the direction of Empire, the bookings concentrated on the younger genre of R&B acts, which resulted in national media attention by MTV.com & Radio, Vibe Magazine and BET. This lineup put The Rochester MusicFest on the map as one of the 3 major R&B festivals in the US, representing the North East completely.

THE LINEUPSaturday July 17

Black August (local Rochester BOB winners)Nina SkyJagged Edge112CiaraJohn LegendBoyz II Men

Sunday July 18

Statiq (local Buffalo BOB winners)Fatty KooRaheem DevaughnLyfe JenningsCommonFaith EvansBrian McKnight

Empire is constantly looking for more ways to promote the festival and help in the overall effort of its success, so we conceptualized and spearheaded a Battle of the Bands competition in both Rochester and neighboring city Buffalo with local radio stations WDKX (Rochester) & WBLK (Buffalo). These competitions were held to determine the best possible local talent to open both days of the festival. This resulted in an enormous amount of local radio publicity and live performances by finalists that generated great audience interest and attendance in both cities.

This year Empire also booked BET reality series group Fatty Koo, who ensured presence from BET and The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. This tour bus is a mobile recording studio where the band was discovered. With the addition of this group, the MusicFest was ensured great national press.

Empire made an additional effort in promotion and arrange for local ‘Step' winners and runner ups, perform between artists on both days. This allowed for cross-promotion at their annual Step Off competition which draws over 6,500 attendees just a few short week before the festival. These performances added to the color of the festival and served to bring additional thrills to the audience.

To add to the excitement, Empire arranged for the inclusion of a ringtone company that made music of all artists on the lineup available for attendees to purchase either prior to or during the festival at very reasonable prices. This added some hi-tech coolness to the festival and brought together companies that collaborated to help promote the festival.

Empire was also responsible to manage all talent logistics, dressing rooms and backstage design and management. Unfortunately on both days of the festival, we had to evacuate due to extremely dangerous lightening storms. On Saturday the concert was stopped midway during John Legend's set and also prevented the headliner, Boyz II Men from performing. On Sunday, the same thing happened and both Faith Evans and Brian McKnight were unable to perform. During both days, Empire was responsible for evacuating approximately 200 people (talent and crew) from the backstage area in flooded and pouring conditions. The evacuation was performed quickly, professionally and the job that Empire did was highly commended by the local officials and client.

Empire Entertainment pays attention to up-and-coming (pre-Grammy) R&B artists and leverages its relationships with multi-platinum and Grammy Award-winning artists and their agents. Empire prides itself that we are quickly becoming one of the leaders in the industry of festival bookings in the US.