Glastonbury Festival

ROCK MUSIC

GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL

• The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, commonly abbreviated to Glastonbury or even Glasto, is a performing arts festival that takes place near Pilton, Somerset, England, best known for its contemporary music, but also for dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other arts.

The Pyramid Stage

The beginning

• The festival organiser Michael Eavis, a farmer in a Somerset valley stated that he decided to host the first festival, then called Pilton Festival, after seeing an open air Led Zeppelin concert at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music 1970.

The organizer

The festival

• The size and nature of the festival, held over three or four days in the open air, with performers, crew and paying festival goers staying in tents, caravans and motorhomes, has meant that the weather is significant. It is now attended by around 150,000 people requiring extensive infrastructure in terms of security, transport, water and electricity supply. The majority of staff are volunteers, helping the festival to raise millions of pounds for good causes.

Glastonbury Festival's "Other Stage" with tents in the foreground

Jazz World field on the openingWednesday afternoon of

the festival

View over the Glastonbury Festival, taken on Wednesday 24 June 2009

The latest show

• The Glastonbury Festival 2011 took place from Wednesday 22 until Sunday 26 June 2011.[150] The tickets were sold out within 4 hours of going on sale on Sunday 3 October 2010. Headline acts for 2011 were U2 on the Friday night, Coldplay on the Saturday and Beyoncé on Sunday.

Stars on the stage

COLDPLAY

BEYONCE