Park City Song Summit, a music lovers dream

Tank and the Bangas will play at 5:30 pm at the Snow Park Stage on Friday, September 10th, as a part of the Park City Song Summit. Photo: Ingrid Nacole

PARK CITY, Utah. — The Park City Song Summit is a vision to transform the musical experience. The inaugural event, September 8 through 12, will bring over 100 artists to Park City. Ben Anderson founded the Park City Song Summit to rejuvenate the music industry with a structure that invokes conversation, inclusion, collaboration, and creativity. Participants dive deep into the artistic process and connect as humans.

Ben’s belief in the Park City Song Summit is palpable over the phone as he explains his inspiration, “We felt like there was something to be done that could be different… I want to create something that is an advocate for the artists, an advocate for music lovers… who want to dig deeper and learn more about the artist as a person, in addition to hearing their music played live.”

The Park City Song Summit is revolutionizing the music industry with labs, an intimate setting for honest conversation between creatives and audience members. Discourse destroys the pedestals that perpetuate idolization and de-humanization of performers and reveal the raw personal element to creating art. Ben explains, “One on one conversations in a TED-style… provides a platform in an intimate setting for music lovers to listen to what it is that ignites and energizes these artists through their creative process.”

There are 40 labs scheduled at the time of writing that cover a diverse range of topics. Ben sees the labs as space for social restoration, “The world is more divisive… There is a need for healing in the post-pandemic era… These labs allow us to explore important social issues… To dive deeper into these issues in the labs allows us to really connect… Through community, connection, and communication, we can begin to understand others that are not like us,” he says, “Because at the heart of it all should be love. If the heart of it all is love, the way we get there is through understanding other people.”

Ben is proud to be 14 years sober. He intends the Park City Song Summit to be a safe space to discuss addiction and mental health. “There is this exclusivity that I felt when I got sober… It was expected that at a live music show, it’s sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. That is not the way it has to be. We lose a lot of artists and audience members because of that age-old mentality,” he says. Connection and empathy eradicate taboo and provide a platform to discuss mental health, addiction recovery, and suicide prevention.

The Park City Song Summit alters the celebration of music with labs and attention to musicians’ wellbeing. “We asked all of our artists to be artists in residence. We asked them to come to town with their families. And this to be more of a rest bit on their tour, rather than just another stop,” Ben says, “This is for artists to see one another and be inspired by one another and to hang out together to collaborate on these stages.”

Ben desires the Song Summit to be an event open to all walks of people, which influences ticket pricing. While a conversation with a favorite musician is priceless, labs are $35. Single tickets for daily shows at various local venues are around $50. The musical experience is groundbreaking and not meant to break the bank.

The Park City Song Summit is carving a new sculpture for what it looks like to come together and rejoice in music. Ben envisions a big future, “What is going to come out of this is something that you or I or no one else can really imagine right now, and that is just in year one… This is a tree that is going to have a lot of beautiful branches and lots of leaves, and then it’s going to grow into a forest.”

Written by Ashley Brown on behalf of Neighbors of Park City