Friday night’s concert, featuring world renowned tenor Jose Carreras and the huge local talent Lydia Caruana was fantastic. It was an absolute gem of a night and one to remember.
Before getting into the thrust of this editorial, one would have to say hats off to NNG promotions for organizing such a wonderful evening, in conjunction with the Malta International Airport and others.
The concert theme all started out in Malta years back with performances from artists such as Tina Turner, Joe Cocker and Marco Masini, but we have come a long way since then.
Over the past five years or so, we have seen various big names come to Malta – Sting, Eros Ramazotti, Faithless, Roger Waters, Elton John and Bob Geldoff. We have, of course, just hosted Jose Carreras and the next big name is Bryan Adams, who is due to give a performance later this month.
Perhaps most of these performers have had their heyday and are in decline, however, such concerts do provide a wonderful form of entertainment that brings us on stream with the rest of Europe.
Concert organizers have said time and time again that their biggest problem is economies of scale. They simply cannot afford to pay bigger names because they simply would not make enough money out of the event. So what can be done ?
Let us take the UK as an example. Every summer, the UK holds various music festivals such as V, Glastonbury, Leeds and Reading amongst many others.
People from all over the world travel to these destinations to enjoy a weekend of music from the very latest chart bands, and some who have not made the big time yet.
Perhaps Malta could organize something on those lines. There are of course local festivals, but we should do more to attract more performers from overseas. As we have mentioned, music festivals are a big tourist crowd puller, in fact many Maltese people travel up to the UK to watch various concerts and festivals.
This is an area that the Malta Tourism Authority and the Tourism Ministry could exploit. If the country hosted a music festival in the balmier days of early or late summer, we could be in for bumper tourism arrivals, as well as providing some great entertainment for the local general public too. If correctly marketed, it could become a fixture on the calendar. Of course, one understands that such events do not happen overnight, but with consultation with people who have organized concerts, we could be onto a winner.
Malta is, in fact, the buzz word in many places at the moment. The Catalans and the Irish simply can’t get enough of Malta – our country as a destination seems to be undergoing something of a renaissance and if this idea is feasible, we should strike now while the iron is hot.
We have established that Malta cannot make it as a sun, sand and sea holiday. Equally, it cannot make it as a cultural destination as a stand alone. We have to tie everything in together and it seems that is the tack which we are on. Sun, sand, sea, architecture, diving, nature walks… we are building quite a repertoire. Now if we added a music festival on a yearly basis, which we can market internationally (through our new partners Media Consulta), we could have another crowd puller in the mix.