Spring Awakening Releases First Phase of Lineup
The Chicago music event, Spring Awakening Festival, released the first phase of their lineup earlier this week. The festival, which occurs from June 9-11 in Addams-Medill Park, is presented by React Presents, the Chicago based festival promotion company that puts on events such as North Coast Music Festival and Freaky Deaky.
Spring Awakening has come a long way since it started life as a much smaller concert series back in 2008. React Presents, which was also founded that same year, turned it into a full-blown outdoor festival in 2012, when it debuted at Soldier Field as a two-day event. It grew to three days by 2013 and started pulling in crowds of more than 75,000 people, cementing itself as one of the biggest dance music weekends in the Midwest. The festival called Soldier Field home through 2015 before moving to Addams/Medill Park on the city’s southwest side starting in 2016, where it’s remained ever since — this 2017 edition will be the second consecutive year on those grounds.
From the first release of artists, it appears that Spring Awakening will be a must for festival attendees. From veteran producers Axwell Λ Ingrosso and Armin Van Buurren, to Chicago natives Louis the Child and Krewella, the lineup so far features a wide variety of sounds. Some other noteworthy musicians included dubstep icons Jauz and Excision as well as smooth and groovy Zhu. Buy your tickets here and get ready for the second phase to be released next week.
It’s a strong opening salvo for a festival that’s built its reputation on stacking genuinely diverse bills rather than leaning on the same handful of headliners every year, and this phase-one reveal is no exception — pairing trance royalty like Armin van Buuren against homegrown Chicago talent in Louis the Child and Krewella says a lot about what React Presents is going for with the 2017 edition. Spring Awakening typically runs across six stages once the full lineup drops, with sets running from early afternoon into the night across all three days, so there’s plenty of room left on the bill for React Presents to fill out with phase two and beyond. Given the festival’s track record of drawing tens of thousands of fans to the southwest side of the city every June, expect this year’s event to be another sellout in the making.
