SALT LAKE CITY — Snoop Dogg, Diplo and others are scheduled to perform at this year’s Twilight Concert Series, it was announced on Thursday morning.
The lineup is out now! Diplo on 8/16, Robert DeLong on 8/23, Moon Taxi on 8/30, DJ Snoopadelic AKA Snoop Dogg on 9/6,...
Posted by Twilight Concert Series on Thursday, June 21, 2018
The long-running series has been in flux since last summer, when Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski recommended the series not be funded for 2018, citing two 2017 Twilight shows that ran deficits exceeding $100,000. The Salt Lake City Arts Council initially planned to revive the series in 2019, but Biskupski announced in February that it would return this year, in a short-term partnership with Salt Lake City-based Broadway Media.
“The city is really supportive of that private partnership, but we didn’t necessarily facilitate that or make that deal. But we’re really glad that it happened,” Lia Summers, Salt Lake City's senior advisor for arts and culture, told the Deseret News. According to Summers, the city did not allocate funds for this summer's Twilight series.
Summers said city representatives conducted surveys gauging the public's feelings about the series, which had grown considerably in recent years, in both attendance and cost. These surveys, Summers explained, showed the public response to the series was “sort of a mixed bag”: Some preferred its previous iteration at the Gallivan Center, others preferred its recent Pioneer Park location, while others felt it was either simply a nuisance or unneccessary.
“I mean, no one program can be all things to all people, and we understand that, so making sure that our resources are allocated across many different kinds of programs that serve collectively the whole city is really our goal,” Summers said.
Efron Corado, vice chair of the board for the Salt Lake City Arts Council, said the concert series grew exponentially over the past few years, making it increasingly difficult to handle for a relatively small non-profit. That increasing size also made the stakes for failure even higher if a given concert didn't recoup its costs.
“But the reality is that the program itself, it is what it is because it’s not a for-profit program,” Corado said. “If (a for-profit series is) what we wanted to make, then it would be a completely different ballgame.”
Under the Arts Council's new trial partnership with Broadway Media, Corado said, many of the logistics like booking, concert promotion and production will be outsourced to Broadway Media, which will report to the Arts Council. The 2018’s series is also moving from Pioneer Park to the Gallivan Center.
This year's performers are as follows:
- Aug. 16: Diplo
- Aug. 23: Robert DeLong
- Aug. 30: Moon Taxi
- Sept. 6: DJ Snoopadelic (a.k.a. Snoop Dogg)
- Sept. 13: King Princess, Flora Cash