Lucerne’s one-of-a-kind music festival
It started out as a group of musicians jamming in the midnight hours on a boat in Lake Lucerne, but now the Blue Balls Festival ranks as a premier event.
The international festival, which attracts more than 100,000 visitors each year – as well as some top music names – is aiming to differentiate itself from muddy open-air concerts.
“The festival was an idea I had with two of my friends, one was a musician and the other an organiser, early one morning when we were jamming in my flat,” Urs Leierer, the director of the Blue Balls festival, told swissinfo.
The idea took shape and on a September night in 1992 around 300 people gathered on the old steamboat Stadt Luzern – a Lucerne landmark – to watch 40 musicians play into the night.
This event eventually found dry land – and grew. The nine-day festival, which starts on July 18, now features around 100 shows at several locations around the central city of Lucerne and its lake. On offer are blues and jazz, as well as world music, rock and pop.
“We’ve tried to make it a bit bigger and more important,” Leierer explained on the sidelines of a media conference.
According to the organisers, Blue Balls is now the largest festival in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.
Intimate atmosphere
Among those in the international line-up this year are singers k.d. lang and Macy Gray, as well as the legendary George Benson. Poster girl Erykah Badu is one of the opening acts.
Top performers are always important, says Leierer. “But what’s special about Blue Balls is that we get some big names and they play in front of a very small audience,” said Leierer.
This intimate atmosphere is how the festival aims to distinguish itself from the more than 100 other events taking place in the country over the summer.
“There are too many festivals in Switzerland, it’s absolutely amazing that they can survive and that people have the money to buy all those tickets,” remarked Leierer.
“But most of them are open air festivals, for a very young crowd, where you have to go with a tent and your boots because you never know if it’s raining or you’re going to have to stand in mud for two hours listening to the concert.”
At Lucerne, he says, people can listen to the concerts inside in the amazing acoustics of the Jean Nouvel-designed Culture and Convention Centre, or in the plush surroundings of the five-star Schweizerhof Hotel, the festival’s club venue.
But the open-air feeling is not totally ignored – there is an outside lakeside pavilion, featuring, among others, upcoming Swiss acts.
Heidi Happy
One of these is Heidi Happy, described by Leierer as “one of the best new acts in Switzerland.”
Otherwise known as Priska Zemp, Heidi Happy is a singer-songwriter who describes her songs as “melancholic with a tiny bit of irony”.
“For me it’s a very nice opportunity to play there, it’s also nice to have another concert in Lucerne because most members of my band come from Lucerne and I’ve been here quite a while myself,” Zemp told swissinfo ahead of her appearance at Blue Balls.
The name Heidi Happy was first meant as a joke ahead of Zemp’s first performance and has stuck. The successful singer-songwriter, who sings in English, is now signed up to label in Switzerland and in Amsterdam, where she lived for several years.
“I feel more comfortable singing in English. Sometimes it’s very personal, so it’s also to have some distance. When I’m singing in [my native] Swiss German I’m very aware of what I’m telling people,” Zemp explained.
Leierer says it’s important to include bands from both home and away.
“We are also an international music festival, we want to bring music to the people that they don’t see every day,” he said.
“You can see Swiss bands quite often in Switzerland, but for new, up-and-coming groups, we give them a hand.”
swissinfo, Isobel Leybold-Johnson in Lucerne
The 16th International Lucerne Blue Balls Festival is taking place from July 18-26.
Locations are: the Culture and Convention Centre Lucerne, the Schweizerhof hotel, and the outdoor pavilion.
The poster was created by New York photographer David Benjamin Sherry. There is also an exhibition taking place by acclaimed rock and pop photographer Kevin Westenberg.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.