Big Apple site for Chinese music fest

Chinese actress Maggie Cheung performs at the Strawberry Music Festival. Photo provided to China Daily

Maggie Cheung flops at music fests

Strawberry Music Festival bears fruit in summer

In May, the Strawberry Music Festival held events in Beijing and Shanghai, headlined by Hong Kong singer-actress Maggie Cheung. More than 250,000 tickets were sold.

Before its US debut, the Modern Sky Music Festival will be held in Beijing from Aug 29 to 31 with six stages and more than 100 acts from China and abroad.

"We've been working on a plan to bring the Modern Sky Music Festival to New York for quite some time. Central Park was always our first choice for a venue," says Michael LoJudice, director of Modern Sky's New York office.

"We set out to build a festival program, which all New Yorkers would be interested in."

LoJudice, a veteran of the music industry in the US, began working for Modern Sky in 2006, when it was a struggling record label working out of a small office on the west side of Beijing.

When then-general manager Meng Jinhui brought British alternative rock band Suede to Beijing for the first time in 2003, the music label lost a lot of money. Also, the albums of indie bands under the label at the time sold poorly.

The big turning point for the company came in 2007, when Shen decided to hold the first Modern Sky Music Festival in Beijing. LoJudice helped bring American indie rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs to the three-day music festival.