EWOB lives!

After the concern expressed in the BIB post of 17 May this year, it's good to be able to reproduce the following announcement on their Facebook by the organising team of the European World of Bluegrass (EWOB) Festival. As one leading member of the European bluegrass community has commented, this means that the twentieth EWOB will take place in 2017:

Dear Bluegrass lovers,

It gives us GREAT PLEASURE to announce that, despite the concerns we raised earlier this year, we will continue the EWOB tradition in 2016. The festival location ‘t Trefpunt will remain available until 2017 and our aim is to continue until then, while looking into other options for the future.

An important function of EWOB remains uniting and professionalising the European bluegrass scene by providing a unique platform and enabling a musical experience exchange. Our ‘drive’ to continue is mainly fed by this conviction and your warm reactions each year.

Several factors do force us to carefully consider our ability to organise the festival each year. We still need to enlarge our team to help ensure continuity. With the support of our dedicated national and international sponsors we still manage to ‘balance the books’, meaning that the festival is still able to sustain itself.

Earlier this year we announced that EWOB would reconsider its format. For 2016 some minor changes will be made. We have decided to reduce the number of performing bands from 42 to 33 without changing the festival duration. This means that the duration of the performance of each selected band will be increased to 40 minutes (incl. setup-time). Band applications can be submitted shortly. The procedure will be announced separately and the application form will shortly be available on our website. Also we are currently looking into ways of expanding the horizon for the ‘European Bluegrass Band of the Year Award’ and will keep you posted on any developments.

We hope that sufficient volunteers will once again make themselves available and help us realise a great bluegrass experience, May 5-6-7, 2016 in ‘t Trefpunt, Voorthuizen, The Netherlands!

Hope to see you in May!