Thank you for the music: Jersey Live bows out after 13 years

Thursday 26 January 2017

13 years, over 100,000 visitors and hundreds of chart-topping acts: today Jersey Live says “Thank you for the music”, as it announces the festival’s closure.

With the two founders Warren Le Sueur and Warren Holt having agreed to part ways to engage in separate projects, no Jersey Live festival is scheduled for 2017, making 2016 – a year of Disclosure, Richard Ashcroft and true Madness – the event’s final encore. It also means the end of the popular Folklore Festival.

Warren Le Sueur described his “amazing” 13 years with Jersey Live – and later with Folklore Festival – as, “a great journey.”

Video: Highlights from Jersey Live 2016, the event's final year.

“Warren Holt and I both feel that the time is right for us to end our Jersey Live adventure, along with Folklore Festival also, with fond memories. We now have very different ideas and influences from when we first started and we look forward to being part of different types of events, separately, in the future,” he said.

Mr Holt added: “It is a great pity that an exciting journey has come to an end. This was very much Jersey’s event as apposed to a voyage of the two founders. The members of the public had made Jersey Live become one of the key annual events in Jersey. Although Warren and I are now going in other directions, I sincerely hope that I will be able to be party to another significant event one day in Jersey.”

Originally inspired by visits to Glastonbury, the two Warrens, who were promoters/DJs at the time, kicked off the festival in 2004 as a 4,000 capacity, one-day event in 2004.

Pictured: A bird's eye view of the main stage at Jersey Live, held at the Royal Jersey Showground in Trinity.

But it soon grew to a weekend-long event, welcoming an audience of 10,000 to enjoy big name entertainment across six stages such as Ed Sheeran, Ellie Goulding, Calvin Harris, the Prodigy and Paul Weller among many more.

Following the decision not to continue, the festival founders are now extending their thanks to the many Islanders who made the music possible: “sponsors, business partners, suppliers, as well as the Parish of Trinity, the licensing authorities, emergency services, honorary police, St John Ambulance, Jersey Youth Service and our loyal team of volunteers who have consistently given up their time to help to stage the events.”