New Stages

There are a lot of factors that go into making a good city great, and among the most important are the cultural institutions that serve to enrich the lives of its citizens. In St. Louis’ case, that’s not just the many museums and parks and galleries that we’re lucky to call our own — to say nothing of our world-class symphony orchestra and admission-free zoo — but also the annual events that bring the community together to celebrate all the city has to offer.

These cultural institutions can be big business as well. According to a study released by the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis (RAC) in October, the arts contributed more than $868 million to St. Louis’ economy in 2022 alone. The city’s arts and culture sector is home to nearly 12,000 jobs, according to RAC, with President and CEO Vanessa Cooksey adding that four out of every five tourists surveyed said the main reason they came to the region was due to the arts scene. 

In particular, St. Louis has a rich history of hosting world-class music festivals that draw top talent to the Gateway City — destination events that see fans traveling from all around the country to share in the joy of music together. From long-running favorites like the Open Highway Music Festival or Twangfest to newer offerings like STL Fest and the myriad efforts of Jamo Presents to late, great events like LouFest, St. Louis has long cemented itself as an ideal city for top-notch musical acts to band together.

In recent years, three newcomers have made huge waves in the region’s music festival landscape in relatively short order. Confluence Music Festival, Music at the Intersection, and Evolution Festival have all sprung to life since 2021, and while each brings its own identity and experience to the table, they all serve to contribute to the rich cultural heritage that helps St. Louis thrive.

Music at the Intersection was the first of the three festivals to get off the ground — presented by the Kranzberg Arts Foundation, the inaugural edition was held in September 2021. But Executive Director Chris Hansen says the groundwork was laid years earlier, in 2018 and 2019, when the foundation set up meetings with dozens of organizations and hundreds of artists to strategize a cohesive vision for a growing music industry in the St. Louis region. 

One of the calls to action that grew from those efforts was a music festival that reflected the city itself.

“A music festival in our likeness,” Hansen explains, “that was civically rooted and funded, that didn’t kind of live and die by the same bottom-line pressures that a lot of festivals do, that really celebrated St. Louis’ input on the American Songbook, was locally produced, and the majority of the acts on the stage are from and connected to St. Louis.”

The fest quickly proved itself a hit, and since its founding it’s seen such superstars as Lalah Hathaway, Buddy Guy, Robert Glasper, Herbie Hancock and countless others grace its stages, performing alongside a bevy of the city’s own top talent. Its upcoming edition, set for September 14 and 15, will see the likes of Black Pumas, Big Boi, Chaka Khan, Lettuce, and Trombone Shorty joining St. Louis’ own Chingy to perform in the heart of the Grand Center Arts District — and those are just the acts on the top line. In addition to live music, the festival also shares a “Vendor Row,” offering an outdoor market for local artists and small businesses, as well as eats and drinks from area food trucks and restaurants. These offerings are rounded out with live street art activations, artist talks, and other art installations and events throughout the weekend.

According to Hansen, the fest has seen significant year-over-year growth, and he expects there to be 15,000 people in attendance this year, up from 12,000 in 2023. At the same time, Music at the Intersection has established itself as a boutique experience for fans of jazz, blues, soul, R&B, and hip-hop — and it’s done so while staying true to its original vision and its commitment to uplifting St. Louis artists.

“When you go see Lamar Harris, or you go see Scooter Brown or Marquise Knox or Emily Wallace, when they’re on a stage and the stage next to them’s got Robert Glasper or Gary Clark, Jr., some international celebrity, you don’t hear the difference necessarily, right?” Hansen says. “These are world-class artists. We’ve got it in our bones.”

Less than a year after Music at the Intersection debuted, another new festival brought national and local acts to stages in Madison, Illinois. Although on its face Confluence Music Festival, hosted at World Wide Technology Raceway as part of the Enjoy Illinois 300 Cup Series race, may not seem to have all that much in common with its Grand Center predecessor, the two festivals share visionary and ambitious founders.

According to Confluence’s Executive Producer Kwofe Coleman, who also happens to be President and CEO of The Muny, Confluence was dreamed up by Dave Steward, World Wide Technology Chairman and Founder. Steward’s company owns the naming rights to World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, which has long played host to various NASCAR events, including the Enjoy Illinois 300 Cup Series race. Steward reached out to Coleman in 2021 with a proposition: He wanted to include a music festival element with that annual event when it debuted in 2022, and he wanted Coleman to spearhead it.

“Dave is a visionary in a lot of ways, including he can just see things and make them possible. So he was like, ‘Let’s make it big,’” Coleman explains. “So it was his brainchild to showcase the level of musical talent and breadth of musical talent that’s in our city and region, and show the world that we can also bring in A-list, top-level talent to mix into that. To use the spotlight and the platform of NASCAR to put the St. Louis and Illinois region on the map for that part of the population.”

Being that NASCAR has a broad audience, Coleman says the organizers deliberately aim to bring in artists from a variety of genres for the music festival. This year’s event, held in June, saw rapper Ludacris joined at the top of the bill by country singer-songwriter Riley Green, for instance. And further down the bill was a host of top St. Louis acts that would be (and in some cases, have been) right at home at the likes of Music at the Intersection — jazz and soul act Dave Grelle’s Playadors, wide-ranging trombonist Lamar Harris’ Georgia Mae project, and perennial hip-hop favorite DJ Mahf among them, just to name a few.

Finding and securing that kind of talent among the city’s ranks was not a difficult proposition, according to Coleman.

“When you grow up in St. Louis, you get to know the people and the players, and you can’t go out on a weekend and not find great live music,” he says. “So you just start to get connected, and then that network grows.”

Confluence Music Festival is an added value for Enjoy Illinois race attendees — tickets to the music fest can’t be purchased separately — so Coleman says it’s impossible to deliver hard numbers to indicate its growth. Yet he notes that tickets for the combined events have sold out each year, and he sees things moving in a good direction year over year.

“I think one way I can measure growth is that you continue to see a different mix of folks in the audience,” he says. “Just the informal straw poll of people saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to go to this concert and see the race,’ as opposed to ‘this race and see the concert,’ right? That’s a nice thing to see.”

Evolution Festival may be the newest of St. Louis’ major music festival newcomers, but that’s not to say its organizers are new to the business. In fact, Joe Litvag and Steve Schankman have several decades of combined experience in the live music business between the two of them. Schankman got his start back in 1968 when he co-founded the St. Louis powerhouse known as Contemporary Productions, which has handled countless high-level concerts in the 50-plus years since its founding, and which even had a hand in the creation of Riverport Amphitheater (now Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre) and The Pageant. Litvag got his start as an intern with Schankman’s company in 1993, after which his storied career saw him hold top positions at Clear Channel Entertainment (now Live Nation Entertainment Inc.), AEG Live, and Danny Wimmer Presents in addition to founding The Just Listen Company. Between the two of them, they’ve produced tens of thousands of events.

It’s no surprise, then, that the pair’s work creating a festival catered to their shared hometown of St. Louis was an immediate hit. The debut edition of Evolution, held in August 2023 and headlined by Brandi Carlile, The Black Keys, The Black Crowes, and Ice Cube, brought some 25,000 festival-goers to Forest Park for two days of live music, local food and drink (including a beer garden), a local vendor marketplace, and an art gallery curated by RAC. For this year’s event — set to go down on September 28 and 29 and headlined by The Killers and Beck in addition to Jane’s Addiction, Blondie, Nile Rodgers & CHIC, Killer Mike, and many others — Litvag expects to see even more people in attendance.

“Our hope for year two is that we’re gonna do 35,000 or more over the weekend,” he says. “Festivals grow organically, year over year. And the hope last year was that we just create an experience that people enjoy — with music that people enjoy — and if we treat them properly and give them the amenities that they want, then they’ll come back and bring their friends the following year. And so far, we’re seeing that trend play out.”

Although Evolution Festival is still in its relative infancy, Litvag has enough experience in the business to have a clear idea of how he’d like to see it grow into the future. He likens his vision to the early decades of Fair St. Louis, when in the ’80s and ’90s what seemed like the whole city would gather beneath the Arch to catch some live music and mingle — a yearly cultural event that everyone could look forward to, and a “rallying point for our city to bring people together.”

“There have been studies done in most major cities around the country — St. Louis included — on what makes a city vibrant and a great place to live, a great place to work and raise a family, and believe it or not, music festivals have become an anchor piece to that,” he says. “They’re known entities to bring people from different walks of life together, to celebrate together. Every city should have something like this that it can stand behind and call its own.”