Umbria Rock: a new festival with top Brit acts in the heart of Italy

Umbria Rock: a new festival with top Brit acts in the heart of Italy

There's a new music festival in Italy - right in the heart of Umbria... it's called Umbria Rock and the line-up is simply amazing. The event will take place on August 1-3 in Massa Martana (near Perugia): three days to celebrate the music of some of greatest artists in rock, pop and electronic.

The line-up features mostly British artists, with Basement Jaxx, Paul Weller and Kaiser Chiefs to headline. But there will also be performances by Peter Hook & The Light, The Charlatans, James, The Cribs... and more.
To check the full line-up and follow the latest updates, you can visit the festival's official website.

One day passes cost €50 (+ presale), two days passes cost €90 (+ presale) and three days passes can be purchased for €120 (+ presale). There's also a VIP package available, for €300.

The mastermind of Umbria Rock is Yashwant Bajaj, a British tycoon of Indian descent with a great love for Italy and pop music. Bajaj managed to gather a pool of investors under the moniker Asha Music and funded the event with an investment of nearly €1.000.000, mostly coming from foreigner partners (many from Asia, since Bajaj is based in Singapore, nowadays).

Yashwant Bajaj, during a press conference in Milan, explained: "I've been coming to Italy since 1998. I love its countryside. I bought a home in Massa Martana eight years ago and I always thought I wanted to spend part of my life here. [...] I worked in the world of finance as hedge fund manager for the last 20 years, but I grew up in London in the Seventies and Eighties, the golden age of music. I experimented two different worlds".
Bajaj is well aware of the risks of such a project, but he is determined to make everything work: "One of our handicaps is that we are pretty new in the music biz, but our advantage is we are financially rock solid. And we know how to make ends meet: money is, usually, the main reason for festivals to close".