Over the Halloween weekend a huge electronic music festival will take place in Torino, Italy (that’s Turin to you and I), the European incarnation of Detroit’s infamous Movement festival.
In 2006 organisers Luigi Mazzoleni and Maurizio Vitale adopted the Movement brand creating a European cousin that began as a small one-day event and has grown into a huge five-day festival. Never playing the same act twice, the lineup for 2011 is bigger and better than ever, with Space Dimension Controller, Kyle Hall, Underworld, Laurent Garnier, Carl Craig, Tale of Us and Visionquest all taking to the decks. Here the duo explain a bit about their background, how the festival came into being and why they’re still hungry for more…
What was the inspiration behind bringing Movement Detroit to Torino?
Maurizio: Luigi met and fell in love with Derrick May, well fell in love with his music! He came back to me and said “I’ve found the Maradona of electronic music” and I think Gigi went to Movement in Detroit after meeting Derrick in Madrid. And he came back and said “Finally we’ve found a festival which is the one we’ve always desired to produce”.
What are the changes that the festival has gone through since its inception?
Maurizio: We started with one stage in 2006 and this year we’re going to extend to four stages and it’s now a five-day festival. It’s not just an event in one arena. We started with 2,000 people in 2006 and last year we had 16-17,000 in one day and more than 30,000 people in five days. The festival has grown like crazy, and we are still hungry!
Did you ever imagine it would be so big?
Maurizio: I would say it was my mission. An event is not enough. I want to bring all the people that don’t usually go to clubs – with a festival you can do something different. For example, this year we’re doing the Aufgang concert in the conservatory of Torino for the students and this is something new. In my opinion this is how a festival should be.
How has the music scene in Torino changed?
Luigi: It’s an underground city and I think it’s one of the best cities for electronic music in Italy; we have a big following, more so than other cities. But there are no big clubs here – in July we did a party with Carl Cox and we sold more than 3,000 tickets, so we had to rent a location, a sound system and everything, that’s how we do it in Torino.
What’s your mission for the future of Movement Torino?
Maurizio: Our future is to keep growing, to continue our mission, as Luigi says. We had the same mission from the very first day, musicality, enjoyment, to be proud of ourselves. To live from this, because it’s a passion but also a means to earn a living. The future will be to make Torino a relevant global festival and, together with our American friends, to conquer new ground, to put the flag in the ground and take Movement to new countries and find new partners.
Movement Torino takes place from October 27th-31st. For more information go to movement.it
Text: Marcus Barnes
