Spotlight on ... Printemps de Bourges !

Spotlight on... is a series of portraits on remarquable festivals around the globe. Once a month the french bureau export choses an international event to highlight and talk about.

Second stop : Printemps de Bourges, France

Each April, musicians, festival programmers, artist managers, labels and booking agents from France-but also from other countries-descend upon the center of France to the city of Bourges for an annual festival that highlights the top up-and-coming talent playing alongside already established and acclaimed groups. Printemps de Bourges enters its 35^th year in 2012 with 140 artists performing over seven festival venues over six days. In addition to the festival venues, over 150 artists perform on four free outdoor stages and in over twenty bars as part of Printemps in the City. Among music professionals, it has become synonymous with discovering top new artists prior to the summer festival season. The year’s edition covers the gamut of “Made-in-France” talent including a rock’n’beat party (Skip the Use, Yuksek, The Rapture, Birdy Nam Nam,…) and reggae-groove’n’beat party (Tinariwen, Zebda, Ky-Mani Marley,…). The setting is perfect as well with artists performing in often sold-out venues, giving professionals a good impression of how these groups could perform on their stages abroad. One new addition is an acoustic venue at Hôtel de Ville with a breathtaking view of the 13^th century Bourges Cathedral.

It is for these reasons that Printemps de Bourges provides an ideal environment for the labels, concert promoters, festival programmers and booking agents from the four corners of the world that Bureau Export invites each year to see French artists on stage and meet with their French professional environment. The timing of Printemps de Bourges in April prior to summer festival season emphasizes that they have yet to finish booking their selections and are still shopping around these historic streets for the latest talent to grace global stages. With the coordination of Bureau Export, the presence of these invitees offers a unique opportunity for French artists and professionals to develop their presence abroad. This year 20 professionals from 11 countries are attending from Japan, Australia, United States, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, United Kingdom, Norway and Sweden. Among them include the two largest music festivals in Japan, Summersonic and Fuji Rock, the gigantic American festival South by Southwest, the very Francophone Berlin venue Kesselhaus Kulturbrauerei, Germany’s Reeperbahn Festival as well as the London club Jazz Café.

Printemps de Bourges has become one of Bureau Export’s major annual events for international professionals in order to get a taste of “Made-in-France” artists who have plans beyond the Hexagon in less than a week. Concerts, tours abroad, and album releases are some of the types of projects that make these musicians attractive to promoters, bookers, and other music professionals coming in from around the world. In addition to these professionals, members of the Bureau Export team come in from Brazil, Tokyo, Berlin, London and Paris to accompany and assist them in meeting as many French professionals active internationally as possible.

Bureau Export organizes nearly 200 individual meetings to establish, reinforce and wrap-up international development of artists abroad. These meetings allow French professionals to have an exclusive, quick and simplified access to these key tastemakers in one locale. This year, Bureau Export will organise a giant speedmeeting session at the Auditorium du Printemps de Bourges with the assistance of the festival, SACEM and CNV. The direct, individualized meetings are one of the specialties of Bureau Export and have become highly appreciated amongst French and professionals from abroad.

In recent years, groups like Moriarty, Yuksek, Hocus Pocus, Mustang, Surkin, Brodinsky, Teenage Bad Girl and Birdy Nam Nam were discovered by these invitees during Printemps de Bourges, particularly for Summersonic and Fujirock in Japan. For several other groups, the fact that they performed at Printemps de Bourges was decisive for these two key international festivals. Because of these actions, the French presence at Summersonic and Fujirock increased notably from 7 French artists in 2007 to 15 in 2010.

In partnership with Bureau Export