The team behind Splendour In The Grass are in the midst of working on a new festival billed as “somewhere between Splendour and Vivid”. Jess Ducrou​ and Paul Piticco​ have been tapped to run the music program of Spectrum Now festival in 2016.

Ducrou​ and Piticco​, who run the annual Byron Bay event in addition to the Falls touring festival, will specifically organise the music for Spectrum Now, a series of events in Sydney’s Domain, which serve as the flagship of Fairfax Media’s new events arm.

As the Sydney Morning Herald reports, the duo that’s responsible for making Splendour In The Grass one of the biggest events on Australia’s festival calendar will run the Big Top, “a 2000 to 2,500” capacity music venue in The Playground in the Domain.

The Fairfax-run arts and culture festival had something of a bumpy inaugural year. Some events sold out, however others, like the Spectrum Playground, saw a dismal attendance, with footage of a near-empty Domain making its way to social media.

As Tone Deaf reported back in March, The Domain is a venue with a capacity of tens of thousands, having previously hosted 100,000 for Tropfest, but Spectrum Playground, which featured acts such as Saskwatch and Ngaiire, saw an attendance of just a few hundred.

Fairfax are now relying on Ducrou and Piticco to give their event a boost. The pair will curate an 11-night program of performances, with up to three international and local acts each night. They’re even promising a lineup good enough to sell out the Big Top every night.

According to Ducrou​, the event will hew “somewhere between Splendour and Vivid” with a small, hand-picked selection of artists. “It’s going to allow us to tailor-make a program specific for Spectrum Now… that’s a real challenge for us and it’s exciting,” Ducrou​ said.

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“It’s something that Paul and I have been interested in doing and that is programming someone else’s event… it allows us to be 100 percent focused on the artists. A lot of our job is not about the music. I know more about fencing panels than you would care to ask.”

“We look forward to putting our Splendour touch on the Spectrum Now program.” The duo said their lineup will surprise fans of Splendour and their fellow event, Falls, with higher inclusion of electronica acts, as well as singer-songwriters and world music.

No acts have been confirmed yet and the lineup is expected to drop in mid-November (the event is set to be held between 3rd and 13th March), but Ducrou​ and Piticco​ said some Bluesfest​ acts could be on the cards if the dates work out.

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