Khatsahlano festival teams up with former Waldorf Productions team
The Khatsahlano music and arts festival has partnered with the former production team for the Waldorf Hotel.
Tom Anselmi, Ernesto Gomez and Danny Fazio’s newly dubbed Arrival team will bring its artistic curation skills to the free street- based festival taking place on West 4th Avenue in July.
West 4th Business Improvement Association CEO Russ Davies said he saw the partnership as an opportunity for growth.
“We looked at what the Waldorf folks were doing and it was just perfect,” Davies said in a phone interview. “They did everything we would love to do at our festival. We’re lucky to partner with them and we’re very excited.”
Though Davies could not say specifically what artists or art installations would be presented at the festival on July 13, he said Arrival had been given carte blanche to provide an engaging “interactive experience.”
It has been a week of new beginnings for the former Waldorf Productions team, which earlier this year was forced to vacate the old hotel it had helped resurrect in 2011.
On Wednesday it was announced that Arrival had partnered with David Duprey and Rachel Zottenberg, of Rickshaw Theatre, Rumpus Room and the Narrow, to revamp The Fox, an old porn theatre on Main Street, and turn it into a live arts and music venue.
By partnering with Khatsahlano, Arrival joins a “dream team” that includes the music curation skills of Zulu Records and its owner Grant McDonagh and the structural production expertise of promoter brand. LIVE, who have helped put on the festival for the past two years.
The festival attracted almost 80,000 people last year and featured close to 40 Vancouver and B. C.- based musical acts playing over a series of stages staggered along 4th Avenue.
“I’d been to Khatsahlano two years in a row and, to me, it was developing into this real thing,” Arrival creative director Danny Fazio said via phone. “It felt like one of those ‘ proud to be a Vancouverite’ kind of moments. The programming is so high quality. It’s such a great thing to see and be a part of.
“We look at the city as our new place of business,” he added. “We want to take the programming we were doing at the Waldorf and expand it to the whole city.”
Davies said he hopes the festival reaches the 100,000- visitor mark this summer.
“It’s such an ideal partnership between brand. LIVE, Arrival and us,” Davies said. “We’re getting a little of the Waldorf magic sprinkled over our festival.”