Superfly Leisure co-founder and Bonnaroo and Exterior Lands co-creator Jonathan Mayers has died.
Information of the influential live performance promoter’s dying broke final evening in a report from Billboard, arriving simply days earlier than Bonnaroo returns to Tennessee this weekend. Mayers’ reason behind dying is unknown on the time of writing. He was 51 years previous, a Bonnaroo consultant confirmed to Pitchfork.
Bonnaroo organizers confirmed Mayers’ dying in a social media put up at this time and introduced plans to plant a tree in his honor on the pageant, as “a really small token of our appreciation for what he contributed to Bonnaroo.”
“For greater than a decade, Jonathan was a artistic pressure behind this pageant that so many people have held close to and expensive to our hearts now for greater than twenty years,” they wrote. “Our ideas are with Jonathan’s household and mates throughout this very tough time. This weekend we have a good time Jonathan by doing the 2 issues we all know greatest to do in our favourite place on the planet. Spreading love and radiating positivity.”
After rising up in New York Metropolis and graduating from Tulane College in New Orleans, the place he bought his begin on the metropolis’s well-known jazz membership, Tipitina’s, and its long-running Jazz Fest occasion, Mayers began Superfly with Rick Farman, Richard Goodstone, and Kerry Black in 1996.
Constructing on success in New Orleans, in 2002, they teamed up with Ashley Capps of AC Leisure, Chip Hooper of Paradigm Expertise Company, and Coran Capshaw of Pink Gentle Administration to launch the first-ever, sold-out Bonnaroo Music & Arts Competition on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee—and the remainder is historical past.
Named after the creole slang time period for “the perfect on the road”—or put extra merely, a very enjoyable time—Bonnaroo would go on to host legendary headliners like Phish, the Grateful Lifeless, Widespread Panic, Pearl Jam, and Elton John, and develop to host 70,000 annual attendees, serving as a mannequin for tons of extra festivals to observe. Mayers additionally partnered with One other Planet Leisure to launch Exterior Lands at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in 2008.
On the time of his dying, Mayers was not working with Superfly. He was terminated from his place on the firm in August 2021, as relationships along with his co-founders “started deteriorating,” in response to a report from Billboard.
Featured picture courtesy: Bonnaroo. Credit score: Hyoung Chang / The Denver Submit through Getty Photographs.
