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New this year: Yeti Festival

Skiing and music festivals – two of the most expensive ways to have a great getaway without travelling too far – have been coming together more and more over recent years, with The Big Snow in Andorra, Altitude in France and Snowbombing in Austria to name but three.

So is there room for another? Joe Strinati certainly thinks so… He’s the man behind Yeti Festival – a new ski and music festival for Austria. It goes head-to-head with Snowbombing between 5-10 April. TFF sat down with him to ask him why…

You’re starting a skiing festival, abroad, when we’re all penny pinching... why?

The credit crunch may still be in effect, but Alpine resorts across Europe have been busy busy busy! The reports we’re getting back from our lovely Austrian resort of Nassfeld is that they’re jam-packed full of skiers and snowboarders who are hungry for some quality music. Our prices compare really favourably with a normal week’s skiing, so if you love good music and fancy a week’s sking/snowboarding it’s a no-brainer really. People are still going on skiing holidays in their thousands, so why settle for second best when it comes to the evening’s entertainment?

Which other festivals inspired you?

My personal favourites have to Bestival and The Secret Garden Party. The quality of the line-up at Bestival year in year out never fails to amaze, and the idea to create a ‘fancy dress day’ all those years ago was pure inspiration from Monsieur da Bank. It kick-started the whole fancy dress craze which has really captured festival-goers imagination over the past few years. The Secret Garden Party took things to another level with audience participation in all the nonsensical festival frivolity they organise every year. The atmosphere is just great, we love it which is why we booked head honcho the Head Gardener to come and play our festival and bring some of his festival magic with him!

There are increasing numbers of ski and snow festivals, what do you think makes them so popular?

The combination of skiing and snowboarding by day and partying by night is just too good! It makes for the perfect holiday. If you’ve never tried skiing or snowboarding before, I can personally guarantee it really is one of the most fun things you can do on planet earth! Spending most of the day laughing and mucking about with your mates on the mountain, skiing down into a bar for a few jagertees, making loads more friends, then partying to some quality DJs into the early hours... there is no downside!

What do festivals mean to you?

Great music. 24hrs at a good festival can broaden your musical horizons immeasurably when compared to month’s worth of going to gigs. Then of course the atmosphere. The creation of that extra special atmosphere where you feel you can turn round to the person next to you and say ‘how are doing mate?’ - there really aren’t many other places in the world where people feel comfortable doing that.

How did you choose who was playing?

We went for artists that were really into the idea of The Yeti Festival as a festival experience. We’re a small festival so we wanted DJs that would add to the intimate festival family we are creating. Look at our line-up – they are all great characters who will be partying up the front when they’re not playing!

Would you say a festival is about the bands you put on, where you put it on or the people who come?

I think the bands/DJs you put on dictates who comes, so it’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation. At a gig it doesn’t matter too much who comes, you’re there to see your favourite band live. At a festival it’s very different as the interaction between all the festival-goers are what makes it special. There’s lots of ways you can create an atmosphere to foster that interaction, sometimes people need a few ice-breakers to get things going which is why we’ve booked Lost & Found of Bestival and Secret Garden Party fame to be our resident nonsense facilitators! Where you have the festival adds that extra dimension to the whole experience. We know we’ve hit on a winner with Nassfeld, a perfect little picturesque Alpine village with great skiing and the friendliest people to boot.

Where do you see festivals going in the next ten years?

I’m sure that more boutique European festivals will pop up in the coming years, and that Brits will want to travel to them. It will become part of a holiday experience. Personally, I feel like we have to include the rest of Europe in this phenomenon. We need to get all nationalities involved and create a great melting pot of European cultures, a much better atmosphere than ‘Brits on tour’.

Where do you see Yeti going from here?

Definitely to have live acts perform in 2011. We had to keep the production side of things tight for this our first year, but there has been so much interest that we’ll definitely have live acts next year. We want The Yeti Festival name to become synonymous with the freshest and highest quality music there is to offer.