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Loudoun Music Fest finds new sponsors
The Loudoun Summer Music Fest, a community concert series that presents live rock bands at Belmont Country Club in Ashburn, will survive the loss of its founding sponsor, AOL.
The Loudoun Foundation, which puts on the concert series, announced on Jan. 18, that the 2008 season will introduce two new presenting sponsors: Infinitive, a local management consultancy, and OpenBand, an M.C. Dean company.
In December, AOL, which had been a founding sponsor of the series, notified the Loudoun Foundation that it would no longer be able to sponsor the event.
"We were overwhelmed by the response to our predicament," said Tracey Parent, president of The Loudoun Foundation. “We were literally days away from having to decide to abandon the 2008 season. For companies to be able to turn around sponsorship and funding at these levels without prior budgeting is extremely unusual. To say it was gratifying is an understatement."
With the new sponsors now in place, Parent is looking forward to booking bands for the upcoming season.
"We're talking to agents and managers now,” Parent said. “They won't be confirmed until early spring, but we're hoping to see old friends, like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pat Benatar, Blues Traveler and Styx. Plus we're looking at some new acts for us, like Gretchen Wilson, Hootie and the Blowfish, Ringo and the All-Star Band, and maybe even '80s wonder Duran Duran.”
The 2008 season will be the fifth consecutive summer for the Loudoun Summer Music Fest. The event has grown from a relatively small concert series that debuted in 2004 to a community happening that attracts more than 60,000 concert-goers in the course of a season.
The Loudoun Foundation is a nonprofit – 501 C(3) – charity that brings together community residents, businesses and other charities for musical enrichment events and student mentoring programs.
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