Newtown Festival Celebrates 20 Years

Newtown Festival is marking it's 20th birthday next weekend and organisers have lined up an epic musical bill to celebrate. The free festival, which is the largest of its kind in the country, will see eleven blocks closed off to cars to make room for a plethora of food and craft stalls, not to mention 12 stages which will be boasting sonic offerings from the likes of Orchestra Of Spheres, Glass Vaults, Terror Of The Deep, So Laid Back Country China, Death & The Maiden, Seth Frightening, Bunnies On Ponies and many more. Here are the details...

Newtown Festival
Sunday 6th March, Newtown, Wellington

Featuring (in no particular order)... Twinset - Cacosa Saint Funeral - The Eggs - Basketball Jones - Secret Knives - Gamelan Padhang Moncar - The Raskolnikovs - Sam Manzanza Afrobeat Band - Frank Burkett Band - Hannah Fraser - Altero - The Mighty Ukes - Mr Fungus - Shuedet - Milkthistle - Rainbow Country - Trinity Roots - T-Bone Trio - Mehana - Fis - Sendam Rawkestra - Super Super Girl - Amy Jean - Mr. Sterile Assembly - Keely T - Glass Vaults - Finn Johansson - Hypnos - Terror Of The Deep - Richter City Rebels - David Ladderman - Blaek - The Kugels - Grove Roots - Ainslie Allen Band - Pales - The Spines - Daniel Boobyer - Borrowed Cassettes - Aroha String Quartet - Shogun - Ainslie Allen Band - So Laid Back Country China - Tyson Smith Band - Death & The Maiden - Tyna Keelan - Seth Frightening - Monosonic - K2K - Orchestra Of Spheres - Knights Of The Dub Table - Aura - Shoutin Preachin - Richter City Rebels - Fortunes - Israel Starr - Double Ya D - Mongo Skato - Taikoza Wellington - Red Sky Blues - Sui Zhen - Newtown Rocksteady - Red Sky Blues - Jaded Nineties Raver - The Hag - Groeni - Bunnies On Ponies - Keepsakes - The Tape Wolves - Cookie Brooklyn & The Crumbs - Shocking Pinks - Ras Judah & The Culture Embassy - Phantasticus - Zillions - Paddy - Raw Collective - Nice Up Dance

Feast your eyes on Orchestra Of Spheres' fantastical video for '2,000,000 Years'...

Here is Glass Vaults with their self-directed clip for 'West Coast'...

And here's Death & The Maiden with their video for 'Dear ___'

PRESS RELEASE:

A snapshot of local life in vivid, explosive colour: Newtown Festival celebrates 20 years.

From modest beginnings in Carrarra Park in 1995, the Newtown Festival Street Fair has grown to become New Zealand’s largest free, annual outdoor performance event - with 75000 people attending in 2015 and more expected next year.

The Street Fair sees eleven blocks closed to vehicles, to make way for tens of thousands of enthusiastic locals and visitors who arrive on Fair Day to a Newtown transformed. Cafes and restaurants spill onto roads and are joined by a huge array of international food stalls. Local craftspeople, community groups and visiting stallholders add their wares to the already diverse array of goods on offer from Newtown’s shops. Buskers and al fresco street performers vie for the attention of passersby, and the occasional innocent bystander is swept up in a samba dance parade.

Many come for the music. Across twelve stages, the Newtown Festival Street Fair showcases the incredible wealth of talent that Wellington has become famous for, and music-lovers have come to expect not only their most-loved New Zealand bands, but also the up and comers that will go on to become favourites - after all it was here that groups like Fat Freddy’s Drop and The Phoenix Foundation started out.

Just some of the acts spread across the genre pool of eclectic live music at Newtown Festival for 2016 are - Trinity Roots, The Shocking Pinks, So Laid Back Country China, Pales, Twinset, The Eggs... More to be announced in 2016.