Luzern
Shock for Central Swiss culture: Urs Leierer seriously ill – Blue Balls Festival 2022 is cancelled
After two cancellations due to corona, the Blue Balls Festival will not take place this year either. Festival director Urs Leierer is seriously ill, as the Lucerne Blues Session Association has announced.
The Blue Balls Festival attracted tens of thousands of spectators each year.
Countless people had been looking forward to this year’s Blue Balls, which should have started on July 22nd. Especially after it had to be canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the corona pandemic. An illustrious program has already been put together with artists such as James Blunt, Emeli Sandé, Robert Gray, Passenger and the Söhne Mannheims.
Now the bad news: Urs Leierer, festival director and president of the Lucerne Blues Session association, is acutely ill and, according to the festival, is no longer able to organize and carry out the Blue Balls Festival 2022 on medical prescription. Accordingly, this must now be canceled.
Seriously ill: Urs Leierer, director of the Blue Balls Festival.
In addition to concern for Urs Leierer himself, whose state of health has not yet been communicated, the Luzerner Blues Session association is also dismayed at the music fans and the entire population. Vice President Pirmin Lötscher:
“We know how much the Lucerne population misses the festival, which is why we wanted to prevent a cancellation.
But the organizational and financial risks of an implementation are too high in the current situation.” The early cancellation makes it possible to keep expenses as low as possible and to start with the realignment and restructuring now in order to be able to hold a new festival with a new concept and under a new structure in July 2023.
After Corona, organization is not yet established enough to do without a director
When asked, Lötscher explains: “At any other moment we would have carried out the Blue Balls despite this illness. But because of the corona-related cancellations of the festival, which have also weakened our staff, our organization is not yet established enough to be able to complete the festival without a director. »
Pirmin Lötscher, Vice President of the Lucerne Blues Session association.
The club is deeply depressed about the current situation and wishes Urs Leierer a speedy and full recovery. Lötscher: “He made the Blue Balls Festival what it is and we thank him from the bottom of our hearts for his dedication and commitment.”
Urs Leierer: There from the beginning and always right in the middle
Urs Leierer was one of the three founders of the festival in 1992; alongside Richard Köchli and Martin Voking. This started out as a one-off Lucerne Lake Night Session on the steamship «Stadt Luzern». This gave rise to the idea of a big festival. The rest is Central Swiss cultural history: up to 2019, numerous concerts were held every year in the KKL, but also on Lake Lucerne. World stars James Blunt, Alanis Morisette, Ed Sheeran and Joss Stone performed as well as new discoveries and artists from Central Switzerland.
The whole thing has become a folk festival – also with many culinary stands – in which tens of thousands take part. Always in the middle of the action Urs Leierer, who always maintains personal contact with the musicians. And who insists on moderating the performances in the KKL himself.