The Huntington Estate Music Festival is a five-day festival of fine music, food and drinks held in

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The Huntington Estate Music Festival is a five-day festival of fine music, food and drinks held in the great district of Mudgee. Commencing on Wednesday evening and concluding after lunch on Sunday, the festival incorporates eight main concerts with two or three ‘surprise’ late night performances.

The festival attracts an audience of roughly 550 people. Approximately 80 per cent travel from Sydney or other major cities. With its established reputation as one of Australia’s premier music festivals and the venue’s small capacity, tickets generally sell out within hours of going on sale.

To alleviate some of the frustration for those missing the ticket cut, an additional two-day prelude festival was instituted over the previous weekend. The prelude comprises two concerts with a possible ‘surprise’ late night performance.

Background

The festival was created by Bob Roberts, then-owner of the Huntington Estate. For many years, it was considered the artistic research and development hothouse for the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) under the artistic direction of Richard Tognetti.

With the exception of guest artists, the festival program was not announced until patrons arrived on the first day. This was an effective method of self-selection and audience constituents were therefore ACO fans and roadies — people prepared to make a significant financial and time commitment based on their trust in the charismatic Richard Tognetti and the ACO.

At the end of 2005, Bob Roberts retired and the estate was sold. As a natural point of closure had emerged, Richard and the ACO decided to focus their energies on their national touring program and the festival was suddenly looking at life with a new owner of Huntington and an unknown artistic future.

Enter Musica Viva

Facing pressures from the Mid-Western Regional Council to continue the festival for the substantial economic benefits it provided for the local community, Tim Stevens (current owner of Huntington Estate) approached Musica Viva upon the advice of Bob Roberts and the ACO. Within hours, an agreement was reached and Musica Viva (MVA) and its artistic director, Carl Vine, were appointed artistic custodians of the event.

Management

Musica Viva was contracted to manage the programming and delivery of artistic content. This entailed booking, contracting, transporting and accommodating the artists in addition to managing all logistics, including those associated with the performance.

Huntington Estate staff was responsible for managing the venue (including stage, lighting and sound), catering, marketing, ticketing, customer service and insurance.

Issues and problem solving

Artistic management and marketing

In developing the festival program, Carl Vine, artistic director, set the goal of creating a festival that maintained the strong classical theme of past events but enhanced the diversity of music and musicians presented. While remaining very mindful of the ACO audience and its retention, it became particularly important to create something familiar yet neatly differentiated from the ACO.

Both Huntington Estate and MVA shared similar concerns around retaining the existing audience base. For as long as the festival has existed, the audience has primarily comprised ACO patrons with a smattering of locals and people enjoying a weekend away in the country. By and large, tickets to the festival were purchased on the strength of the audience’s relationship with the ACO. They did not know the festival program before this purchase decision was made.

Musica Viva and Tim Stevens were new to the festival and went into it without the security factor of its three main drawcards:

1ACO

2Richard Tognetti

3Bob Roberts.

This was a very daunting prospect for a new owner/presenter and a new artistic team. Additionally, the lateness of MVA’s appointment meant that there was not enough time to negotiate, book, confirm fees and repertoire and contract artists before the tickets were scheduled to go on sale (six months is too short a timeframe for securing any high-calibre artist unless there are exceptional circumstances). A bold program was developed that encompassed not only MVA’s core chamber music programming, but also performances by artists appearing under its Café Carnivale(world music), Ménage (new music) and MVA in schools brands. With a sharp increase in the number of artists/ensembles engaged, more time was necessary to ensure what was promised could be delivered.

With the budget for a festival of this length so delicately balanced, sales could not afford to be lower than 400. In an attempt to mitigate the risk of audience drift based on the absence of program information, the ticket offer was postponed by one month. Even after this time, MVA was still unable to announce a line-up as verbal agreements were still outnumbering any signed artist contracts. No program information was available for release when the ticket offer finally went to market.

How could the new team keep audience numbers at 400 without the three principal drawcards and without an artist and repertoire announcement?

Sales on the day of opening were not necessarily below expectation — but as anticipated by both Huntington Estate and MVA, certainly below what was necessary for the festival to continue. While traditionally selling out on day one of the ticket offer, the festival sold just over 55 per cent of the tickets. Feedback suggested that the investment of $820 (per person for a festival pass) was too great for an ‘unknown’ entity.

There was also advice from many on the MVA mailing list that the process for ticket purchase was too complicated, time-consuming and without guarantee of success. Following this initial lag, a telemarketing campaign began and was moderately successful in spreading the word that an ‘unexpected’ release of tickets would guarantee a confirmed booking. Modest sales resulted.

Meanwhile, the artistic team had succeeded in finalizingagreements with all artists to the point where an announcement could be made. This was one month after the initial date of sale.

Further complications resulted from the emergence of a scheduling conflict with MVA’s 2007 season launch and media campaign, which occurs in September. Not only did the company lack capacity to undertake any additional work in marketing and publicity, the risk of diverting media attention from the principal activity which carries the greatest revenue pressure was too great.

Effectively, this meant that the press announcement of the Huntington program was not possible until the end of September, leaving approximately seven weeks to meet target. It was determined that this still allowed time for a significant marketing push through October and early November with the full expectation of reaching 400 sales prior to the festival.

It also still allowed time to deploy a further risk-mitigating strategy of packaging the festival into smaller modules if necessary (for example, two-day weekend passes, one-day passes or single concert passes). While enabling the festival to recoup a level of revenue, it was an unviable strategy as long as the opportunity to sell a full festival pass existed. Given that nearly two months was available to make 130 sales, any temptation to package was dismissed with the option to review in mid-October.

Given the project timeline conflict with the MVA 2007 season launch, a reverse PR strategy was adopted. A press release detailing festival highlights, artists and repertoire was developed in early September and mailed to the Huntington list. It was also emailed to all of MVA’s Sydney, Canberra and Newcastle lists. The press release was further refined following the MVA season launch and a media campaign instigated in the final week of September.

This generated a spike in sales and the additional capacity was made available at the already sold-out prelude weekend (held prior to the festival) to account for any shortfall in main festival revenue.

Operations and logistics

Transport and accommodation

The location of the festival and reasonably tight budget put pressure on a number of operational expense lines, most notably transport and accommodation. There are between one and three flights per day between Sydney and Mudgee that retail for $198 return. The location of Huntington Estate requires ground transport once in Mudgee, making it more viable to hire cars in Sydney for the duration. This is a difficult sell, particularly for international artists who have spent hours in transit to Australia. A 4.5 hour drive from Sydney is inconvenient, but necessary to minimise costs.

Accommodation in Mudgee typically sells out during the Huntington Festival. In the past, accommodation houses would not take bookings until patrons had been successful in securing festival tickets. Festival weekend tariffs are all increased from 25 to 80 per cent. Initially budgets were created based upon regular weekend tariffs. As MVA was unaware of the somewhat opportunistic tariff hikes associated with the festival, accommodation budget lines were unreasonably stretched early on, forcing cost cutting in other areas.

Venue and production

The performance space at Huntington Estate is a very large shed and it is not climate controlled. There is no sound or lighting and the stage exists on two levels. To reach the higher section of stage, the musicians must be elevated in a cage by forklift truck. To accommodate the stage, some equipmentneeds to be moved out of the shed. As a performance space, it has excellent acoustics, the only downside being the amount of preparation and planning required. The possibility of shifting the dates of the festival is also contingent upon working around the fact that it is a fully operational business.

Weather also comes into play as the success of the dining experiences rests largely upon being able to utilise the outdoor garden and eating areas. Heavy rain or wind forces patrons indoors at meal times, which makes for overcrowded, steamy conditions.

Regular patrons are familiar with 'the drill' when attending concerts and meals at the festival. The festival has always been about the music, living and breathing in a hothouse of creativity, sociability, fine food and outstanding wine. It is a home-grown event, not necessarily a five-star, seamless experience.

This alienation factor was a concern for MVA given that a considerable portion of the audience would be attending for the first time.

Prepared by Musica Viva Australia