Concert series Bristol Sounds set to begin

Move over Glastonbury, live music is coming to Bristol

Bristol Sounds is back for its eighth year
Author: James DiamondPublished 20th Jun 2023

Annual West Country concert series Bristol Sounds will begin on the city's Harbourside on Wednesday (21 June).

The event, which sees musicians play across several nights in the Lloyds Amphitheatre is back for its eighth year, with Mika set to headline day one.

Other acts set to perform include Jacob Collier on Thursday, the band James on Friday and the Levellers on Saturday, with Self Esteem set to round things off on Sunday.

We've met up with promoter Conal Dodds to talk about this year's edition and asked him what he likes in particular about the event.

He said: "Well I live here for one, I've lived in Bristol for 28 years.

"This is the eighth year we've done this event, we have it this week deliberately.

"We know it's the week of Glastonbury, lots of artists use our event as a warm up.

"We probably pay better than Glastonbury does, so it's a good stopping point for acts before they go down to Pilton."

Bristol Sounds has a capacity of about 5,000, with several of the nights including James on Friday already sold out.

"It's a great event for the city," Conal said.

"It's totally unique site, there's not another site like this in the UK that's got the backdrop of a harbour.

"Inevitably we'll see your man bringing the Matthew past as a bit of a sail past...There's not another event I can think of that's ever going to have a tall ship sailing by or occasionally a steam train that's running up and down across the way, so it's great to be able to do these kinds of events bang in the city centre."

Conal called securing Mika a "coup", saying the singer has only performed in the UK around 15 times in the last five years.

He says people are due to come from around the world to see him and others perform.

"We've got a lot of international people coming for Mika especially and for Jacob Collier," he said.

"Mika's got a fan club stretching far and wide so, I think we're going to have a lot of new visitors to the city and I hope that Bristol outside of our event sees the benefit of that.

"We were asked specifically, 'how can we get some flowers to Mika?'"

"The President of his American fan club is coming personally."

You can find out more about Bristol Sounds and buy tickets via this link.

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