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 The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts announced a three-day
festival of "music, culture and community" that will celebrate
"the golden anniversary at the historic site of the 1969
Woodstock festival."
The Bethel Woods Center, a nonprofit that now owns the 37-acre
(15-hectare) field that was the site of the 1969 Woodstock
festival, said in a Facebook posting on Thursday that the Aug.
16-18 festival will be a "pan-generational event."
It will feature live performances from prominent and emerging
artists across multiple genres and decades, as well as talks
from leading futurists and tech experts. The festival is a joint
venture with concert promoters Live Nation.
Details of performers, tickets and other participants will be
announced at a later date, the Bethel Woods Center said.
The August 1969 Woodstock festival, billed as "three days of
peace and music," is regarded as one of the pivotal moments in
music history and 1960s counterculture.
Over three sometimes-rainy days, more than 30 acts - including
Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, The Band, and the Grateful
Dead - performed around the clock to a 400,000-strong audience,
most of whom watched for free and camped onsite in the mud. The
festival was documented in an the 1970 film "Woodstock," which
won an Oscar.
Although it was known as Woodstock, the festival actually took
place in Bethel, some 70 miles (110 km) south of the village of
Woodstock in upstate New York. Bethel is 90 miles (144 km) north
of New York City.
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"Fifty years ago, people gathered peacefully on our site inspired to
change the world through music," Darlene Fedun, chief executive of
the Bethel Woods Center, said in a statement announcing the
50th-anniversary event.
"We remain committed to preserving this rich history and spirit, and
to educating and inspiring new generations to contribute positively
to the world through music, culture, and community,” Fedun added.
The Bethel Woods festival is not affiliated with Michael Lang, a
promoter of the 1969 festival, who has also spoken of plans to
organize a 50th-anniversary event but has yet to make any
announcement. Woodstock anniversary festivals were also held in
1994, 1998 and 1999.
Many of the 1969 Woodstock artists are now dead. Surviving musicians
who are still performing into their 70s include Joan Baez, Roger
Daltrey and Pete Townshend of The Who, and David Crosby, Neil Young,
Graham Nash and Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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