This weekend, the Field Trip music festival will take place at Fort York. What began in 2013 as a celebration of Toronto indie music label Arts & Crafts is now a massive two-day event with an international roster that includes Robyn, Jazz Cartier, Ra Ra Riot and more. We caught up with Aaron Miller, programming director at Arts & Crafts, to chat about what it’s like putting together a giant music festival.
How did you end up as the programmer for Field Trip?
I’ve been working on the festival since its first year, in 2013. It was myself and former Arts & Crafts president and CEO Jeffrey Remedios. We were the original drivers behind the Arts & Crafts side of the event.
Had you ever managed an event of that size before?
I can’t say that I had. I had some years of experience in the live music space as a promoter, and things of that nature. Before Field Trip, Broken Social Scene used to host a one-day event, and I was involved in the last version of that in 2010. But the first Field Trip was the biggest event that Arts & Crafts had singularly put on.
What’s it like putting the show together like now, compared to what it was like back then?
Some things are very different, and some things aren’t different at all. We’ve gotten into a nice groove. It has gotten bigger — we’ve booked more international acts. The first year was just Arts & Crafts artists. Then we moved to a two-day event, and each year we’ve welcomed bigger acts. This year, we have Robyn, who is an international pop star, and we’ve never had an act of that scale. So the diversity of the programming and the scale of the programming has changed.
How do you go about choosing artists?
It’s always a long and non-scientific process. You try to look at who sells tickets, obviously, on some level. But we are looking to curate an event that is cross-generational and cross-cultural. We have hip hop, and we have a pop star, and we have a bunch of indie acts, and we have kids’ music. I can’t think of anyone in our peripheral market who is trying to book across the full spectrum.
What’s it like for you on the ground during the festival?
It was stressful at the beginning, but now we’ve got it pretty dialed in. A lot of the work has been done by the time people come on site. There is a lot of walking around, getting to meet people, watching some of the music and seeing what works and what doesn’t. I’m not a stressed type, I try to enjoy the work. We work on this for 10 months of the year, which is a lot of time to go into one weekend.
Where do you see the festival going in the coming years?
The festival landscape in Toronto is incredibly competitive. We have to continue looking at what sets us apart and why people come to Field Trip. Toronto is an incredible city that deserves a number of incredible music events. My goal is to keep building the community around the festival. We work with a number of artists: multidisciplinary, installation, design, food. It’s not just a music festival. We’re bringing the world to Toronto, and a piece of Toronto to the world.
Field Trip, June 4 and 5 at Fort York, 250 Fort York Blvd.
