Hogarth’s enthusiasm for western bands to visit China was shared by fellow panelist Adam Lewis, founder and co-owner of Boston-based promotions firm the Planetary Group, which has a long history of taking western artists to play shows in China and recently took Icelandic experimental singer-songwriter Olafur Arnalds on a seven-date tour throughout the country.
“Musically [China] has evolved,” Lewis told delegates. “Ten years ago the crowd was all ex-pats. Now it’s not. It’s affluent Chinese who want to go out and go to shows. Crowds are definitely changing [in China]. We used to have be a lot more conservative with the types of bands that we would bring over, in terms of mainstream pop groups but lately we’ve been taking punk bands over.”
