Boom Festival promoter Alfredo Vasconcelos passes

Tributes have been paid to “visionary” Boom Festival director Alfredo Vasconcelos, who has died aged 58 following a lengthy illness.

Vasconcelos, who had been suffering from cancer, was one of four partners in Good Mood Productions, the company behind the 39,000-cap electronic music festival in Portugal.

The biennial transformational event launched as a psy-trance gathering in 1997, with Vasconcelos coming on board seven years later. Remembered by colleagues as a “great friend” who brought “20 years of great intensity and joy”, he is credited as a driving force in its success.

“Alfredo was a permanent supporter,” a spokesperson tells the Lusa news agency, as per Portugal Pulse. “Attentive and available, he always made a point of taking the relationship with Idanha and the region a little further, a commitment to the roots.”

“We will all cherish his memory, presence and the good times together”

The Centro de Portugal Regional Tourism Authority hails Vasconcelos as a “visionary” who devoted himself to the event “wholeheartedly and with great generosity”. Describing his death is “an irreparable loss” for the region, it adds: “Boom is now a festival recognised all over the world.”

Vasconcelos, who passed away on 2 January, was said to be “very active and very involved” in Boom’s sellout 2023 edition, which took place from 20-27 July in Idanha-a-Nova.

Posting on Boom’s Facebook page, the festival team writes: “He passed away surrounded by love. [A] member of Boom since 2004, he has been a passionate advocate of the connection between Boom and the Idanha-a-Nova region. He was one of the four directors of Boom, they are a cell within an organism, a large team of dozens of visionaries and hard-working people.

“Boom is more than the sum of the parts, a truly collective project. We will all cherish his memory, presence and the good times together.”

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.