More experiments to help live music return are set to take place in Luxembourg next month.
Five concerts will be held and all will be subjected to health measures and restrictions. They will take place at the Rockhal arena.
It is being organised by the lobby group, Arena Resilience Alliance (ARA). The concerts will have 100 people in attendance. All will be seated around a central 360° stage. Every one attending will have to wear a mask and adhere to the strict social distancing measures put in place.
The shows will take place in Luxembourg between February 10 and 14.
Attendees will also have to take a Covid-19 test before and seven days after the concert. Each night will have different music on offer from electro to metal.
ARA co-founder Robert Fitzpatrick, who is the chief executive of Odyssey Trust which owns the SSE arena in Belfast spoke to Sky News about the experiments.
“As the advocacy platform for European arenas, the ARA is proud to provide an opportunity for the industry to come together with key EU decision-makers to prepare for a return to live events, whilst working to protect the health and wellbeing of our communities and the sustainability of our industry, which will be central to the economic and societal recovery of countries across Europe.”
He added “Together, we can build regional and national frameworks, with international collaboration that will help us get back to business.”
Olivier Toth, chief executive of Rockhal and co-founder of the ARA, said the shows are an “important step forward in testing the safety measures we can employ to support our back-to-business strategies”.
The ARA will also host a virtual conference on February 18 which will highlight how arenas around Europe are planning for a safe reopening.
As the pandemic goes on, the wait for the return of live music worsens. Glastonbury has been cancelled again and more concerts and festivals are up in the air. Organisers of Download festival have said that they will know if they can go ahead with their festival in March.
March has been seen as the cut-off point for festival organisers and many announcements about the festival season are expected then.
As well these proposed experiments in Luxembourg, other experiments have taken place for the return of live music. Two studies conducted in Germany have shown that music venues are a place of low transmission of Covid-19 if the correct measures are put in place while other experiments have taken in place in Spain with positive results. You can read our report on it here.
