Shanghai Strawberry Festival 2016 has been confirmed for the end of April, taking place once again at the Expo Garden Park. It's one of a slew of music festivals set to be held in the area over the May holiday period, with JZ Spring also due to return for 2016, plus a new EDM Festival from Strawberry organisers Modern Sky.
Having hosted Dinosaur Jr, Carly Rae Jepsen, The Hives and Tricky last year, Modern Sky's Strawberry Festival 2016 will be held in Shanghai over three days from Saturday 30 April-Monday 2 May. As ever, line-up details are currently under wraps, but keep an eye on our blog for updates soon.
Presumably after taking a good look at Storm Festival, Modern Sky have decided they quite fancy a slice of the EDM festival pie and are planning to host another festival just two weeks after Strawberry on the same site, this time focused on that electronic dance music that the kids love. Again, they haven't confirmed who will be pushing play there yet, but they have given the thing a name: MYTH. Maybe they can announce Avicii as a headliner to buy some time? He'll just cancel anyway.
Less mysterious/more organised is JZ Spring - the people behind it have actually named their headliners more than two months before the event takes place. JZ Spring, you may remember, is (as the name suggests) long-running jazz brand JZ's spring-time mini-fest, with a bunch of free shows in Jingan and a not-so-free concert at Shanghai Centre.
Grammy-nominated Gast Waltzing will be opening the indoor portion this year at the end of April, with locally-based trumpeter Li Xiaochuan also on the bill after the pair performed together last month at JZ Club. For the other Shanghai Centre shows, singer-songwriter Jesse Harris will join violinist and singer Petra Haden on May 1, before the Eddie Daniels Quartet wraps things up on May 2; the free shows are expected to feature a number of JZ Club regulars and other locally-based acts as in previous years.
Harris has a Grammy win to his name - he wrote 'Don't Know Why', which was performed by Norah Jones and won Song of the Year at the ceremony in 2003 - while Haden is best known for her work with The Decemberists and Tegan and Sara and for recording a complete a cappella version of The Who Sell Out. Daniels is also a Grammy winner, having picked up his gong for playing on Roger Kellaway's arrangement of Memos from Paradise.