Festivent returns with high-octane lineup, family activities
Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
editor@qctonline.com
The sky over Lévis will fill with hot air balloons starting July 31 as the 41st edition of Festivent takes flight. The hot air balloon extravaganza turned music festival will feature five evenings of music on two stages in Parc Champigny from July 31 to Aug. 4.
American country-folk stars the Brothers Osborne will headline opening night; Black Eyed Peas, Canadian rock legend Bryan Adams, Montreal emo-rockers Simple Plan and songwriting chameleon Daniel Bélanger will be the featured performers on the other four nights. The headliners will be backed up by Canadian talent including bilingual singer- songwriter Pascale Picard (accompanied by the Orchestre symphonique de Lévis), Afro-Indigenous hip-hop up-and-comer Joseph Sarenhes, Saskatoon indie-rock stars The Sheepdogs and feminist punk trio Les Shirley.
Alongside the music, the festival will feature fairground rides, hot-air balloonists and parachutists (weather permitting), director general Sébastien Huot told the QCT. Children and their families will be able to enjoy a foam pit, video arcade, silent disco, bouncy castle, arts-and-crafts activities, miniature golf, face painting, guided tours of hot-air balloons and meet-and-greet opportunities with hot-air balloon pilots, local police officers and firefighters and YouTube star Willibed. Parachutists will hit the skies around 5:30 p.m. on the last three days of the festival.
Festival passports for adults and teens are available for $59.99 plus tax on the festival website while supplies last – more than 90 per cent of the passports available have been sold as of this writing. Children 11 and younger get in free with a paying passport holder, although their passports must be reserved in advance.
“When we go back to the beginning of the festival, it was a few hot air balloonists getting together in a field, and it’s still mainly that,” Huot said. “I have been working to book international artists since 2009, and it was a bit hard at first with people not knowing who we were, but we have good crowds and a family ambiance and a lot of good word of mouth. I’m super happy to bring Bryan Adams back after we had him in 2018, and we are very proud of getting Black Eyed Peas because they haven’t done a show in the while. When we look back on where we started, it’s really cool – it makes us proud.”
Huot said that hot air balloons would take to the sky at 6 p.m. every day of the festival, provided the weather co-operates. Other balloons will be tied down, allowing families to explore and admire them during the day. As night falls, the balloons will be lit, giving the concerts a unique backdrop of glowing orbs. “A lot of people come back year after year to see [the lit balloons] – it’s really special,” said Huot.
For more information and to reserve tickets, visit festivent.ca.