I’ll be flying from Toronto to Amsterdam, so as the song goes, “remember me to Herald Sq– God, sorry. It isn’t the prettiest part of Manhattan, exactly. Go in there and talk about music and then go to one of New York’s nicer parts. High Line! Photo by/(C) Oliver Chesler from last year; see the whole set.

CDM is a presenting sponsor of the IMSTA FESTA in New York on Saturday. It’s a completely free event, but registration is required. What’s notable about this sort of event is that it tends to be more directly musician-focused than big conferences like AES or the truly trade-only NAMM. Some of the highlights of which we’re taking note:

  • Vendor presentations by Native Instruments, Steinberg, Celemony, Propellerhead, Image Line, Waves, and Cakewalk should all be interesting as they all have new products, and say they’ll be showing some of them off. (Also present: McDSP, Pianoteq, SSL, and others.)
  • Legendary producer Hank Shocklee’s Shocklee “Innertainment” is involed, including talented chief Jo-Ann Nina.
  • Web music is front and central, including a look at the future of music platforms with our friend Oliver Chesler of the blog Wire to the Ear (with whom I’ve panelized a couple of times now), and Evolver.fm’s Eliot Van Buskirk. The CEO of Tunecore is on-hand, as is new cloud backup and sharing service for musicians Gobbler.
  • Production is there, too – think Hank moderating a panel with industry heavies on mixing pop, and teaching his own master class, plus drum programming.

http://www.imsta.org/imsta_festa.php

Here’s the catch: normally, covering New York events is easy because I’ve been based in New York. But I’m currently on the road and based in Berlin for most of the remainder of 2011. So, if anyone wants to go and do some investigative research, take some video or the like, let me know!

Read last year’s write-up by Oliver on the panel I moderated:
imsta festa panel review [wiretotheear]

One other question, for the whole world and not just New York: what would your dream event look like? Where would it be? Would it be a mix of workshops and events? With so many events (Music Hack Days, trade shows, and the like), what aren’t you getting from present events? (Asia, Pacific, South America, Africa, interested in hearing from you, too, if you’re out there… not just Europe and North America.)

No specific context, but I do find the question comes up a lot.