Hello Everyone! It’s George Roldan and Beth Wilson, the people who bring you the Rites of Spring Festival, otherwise known as RoSfest, (North America’s premier art rock festival). As we approach RoSfest 2019 in May, we are asking for your support to help us expand our reach into the Florida market with critical ad and radio campaigns. We love Progressive Rock and would like to guarantee that RoSfest succeeds by reaching a larger audience.
About This Project:
As many of you may know, RoSfest, independently owned by Roldan Entertainment and self-financed without any concessions from the music industry, has been going strong now for 15 years and has been primarily located in the Northeast with a strong fan base. We recently moved it to the sunny state of Florida in the city of Sarasota in hopes of growing our Prog family and continuing the festival for many years to come.
We have promoted progressive rock bands both domestically and internationally. Our festival has always been about the music and the fans and we are asking for your help to contribute to our campaign and make it a success. The progressive rock community needs festivals like RoSfest to help our music and enable the artists to have a strong platform to expose their music to the world. There are only a handful of these great independent events left in the USA, let alone the world.
RoSfest, created in 2004, is now in its 16th year! We have put in countless hours of preparation which will lead up to a wonderful 3-day weekend of musical bliss for all who attend in May 2019. Spending a lot of our own money to keep RoSfest going year after year, we are now appealing to our RoSfest family to join us in support so we can expand our reach to a larger audience by using Radio and Magazines to advertise.
We appeal to you, the music lover, to help us put RoSfest and progressive rock bands into the media and into the mainstream. Our plan is to promote RoSfest through media including local radio as well as regional and national magazine ads. We will continue to use social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter to help promote RoSfest, but that’s not enough to get the word out. Our goal is to raise $6,500.00 to support these efforts.
You can help in a number of ways by donating to this Indiegogo campaign. Your contribution will help RoSfest get the word out to people who have no idea that this wonderful awesome festival exists. When people listen to Progressive music, it really helps heal the soul! By donating, you will be helping the bands get the attention they deserve. Our bands this year have been very responsive by donating very special one-off items as well as signed CD’s, customized recordings, records and drum heads to support this fundraiser as well as many other perks.
Some people just can’t contribute, but that doesn’t mean you can’t help:
Other Ways You Can Help
The more people who are aware of our radio and print campaign, the better our chances of raising the necessary funds. By emailing your friends about RoSfest, posting a link to this page on Facebook, or spreading the word on Twitter, you will be giving us enormous support.
Thank you so much for joining in and becoming an active part of our RoSfest family!
Pledge! Our anticipated completion date for RoSfest Radio and Magazine Ads is November 31, 2019. Please help us raise the money we need to allow us to get the word out. All funds raised will go directly towards the media campaign which in turn helps RoSfest.
We are pleased to announce that Peruvian band Flor de Loto have been signed to ROSFest also for 2019.
Following a spectacular performance at last year’s RoSfest, we have decided to bring Peruvian band Flor de Loto back also for the 2019 edition of our festival. For a number of reasons: Their concert last year was brilliant, and many desired to see them again sooner rather than later. Some missed out on the show, and from what they heard from others they knew they had missed something good. Hence we see to it that this situation is resolved. And finally Flor de Loto have now signed with US label Melodic Revolution Records, a label that are longtime friends of RoSfest, and they are releasing Flor de Loto’s new album Eclipse.
As we stated last year: Progressive Rock is alive and well on the South American continent, and one of the most popular progressive rock bands in South America is Flor de Loto from Peru. They have built a steadily growing fan base all over the continent since they first appeared in 2005 with their self-titled debut album, with a solid presence as a live band for more than a decade and seven (soon eight) studio albums to their name cementing their reputation as a high-quality band.
Their take on progressive rock is one that resides somewhere in between Jethro Tull and Iron Maiden, incorporating elements from metal, Andean folk music and, chamber music into their compositions alongside nods towards hard rock and psychedelic rock. This results in a sound and style with a broad appeal: This is a band with fans also from outside of the progressive rock universe.
Alonso Herrera, Alejandro Jarrin, Pablo Alayza, Alvaro Escobar, Pierre Farfán and Gabriel Iwasaki are members of a band that has a reputation as a quality act on all levels. We are eagerly looking forward to being able to once again experience one of the top progressive rock bands from the South American continent performing live at ROSfest 2019.
ROSfest 2019 will take place on May 3rd through 5th 2019 at the Sarasota Opera House, Florida. The final line-up and schedule for the festival are still TBA. Confirmed bands to appear so far are: Riverside (headliner), Karmamoi, Cryptic Vision, Prideaux, Martin Barre (performing 50 Years of Jethro Tull), Edge of Reality, Entransient, and Traverser
I have great news! We now have a host hotel with all the accommodations that we promised and it will be available to book starting on July 3rd.
Please read below for details.
Aloft Sarasota offers a convenient downtown location, vibrant social scene, and tech-savvy design. The Sarasota hotel is located just minutes from the bay, popular islands, and beaches, plus the nearby Ed Smith Stadium and Historic Spanish Point and Sarasota Opera House.
The Rites of Spring festival aka RoSfest is an annual progressive rock festival which takes place at the end of April or in early May. Established in 2004, the festival was held at the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania until 2007, and then moved to the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, Pennsylvania for 2008 and 2009. In 2010, the festival moved to the Majestic Theater in Gettysburg, PA. where it celebrated its15th Anniversary throughout the weekend of May 4th, 5th, and 6th. 2018. On the last day of the festival, George Roldan announced that Polish Prog Metal Band “Riverside” will be one of many bands that will grace RoSfest in 2019.
May 21 just 14 days after the festival George Roland makes an announcement that RoSfest will be relocating to Sunny Florida for the No. 16, here is a posting from the official website.
The RoSfest community is very important to me on so many levels and my long-term goal is to keep RoSfest going for as long as we can in order to benefit the “progressive music family” as a whole for both musicians and Prog music lovers alike. The Majestic Theater in Gettysburg, PA has been a memorable host to us for the past eight years, but even though our reputation continues to grow as the best North America Progressive Rock Festival, our audience attendance has been slowly declining.
As many of you are aware, we recently relocated to Sarasota, Florida. Our decision in selecting this location was not only because of its beauty, beaches, arts, and entertainment but because we believe Sarasota would make the perfect location for RoSfest to continue to survive and grow. Besides having an incredibly approachable downtown social area with blocks of restaurants, bars, hotels, Saturday morning Farmer’s Market, and shops that are bordered by Parks on the Sarasota Bay, Sarasota is home to the SARASOTA OPERA HOUSE offering an incredible acoustic experience residing in a $20 Million renovated theater. Our new home theater is in WALKING DISTANCE to hotels, restaurants, shops, and parks surrounded by views of the Gulf.
There are many additional attractions that people from all over the world visit Sarasota as a destination vacation spot for such as Siesta Key Beach, “Rated as the #1 Beach in the USA, 2017”, Selby Botanical Gardens, The Ringling Museums and Grounds, The Mote Marine Lab & Aquarium, the Art Center Sarasota, The Circus Arts Conservatory, Longwood Key, St. Armands Circle, and Lido Key for Kayaking the Mangroves or the Bay. In the coming weeks, we will share additional information about Sarasota that will include maps, photos, videos, and details to help familiarize everyone with the area. New host hotels will be designated and after hour parties will continue, but all within walking distance as most of you have requested.
I’m aware that this news may upset some of our supporters, but please understand that in order for RoSfest to survive, we’re hopeful that our RoSfest family will give Sarasota a chance so that we can keep bringing you the best that progressive music has to offer!
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