An epiphany at an eventful music festival changed the course of Rhythm & Alps founder and managing director Alex Turnbull’s professional life.

Alex was attending the Roskilde Festival in Denmark in 2000, during which nine people suffocated in a crowd surge while Pearl Jam was onstage. It was before mobile phones were ubiquitous, and before social media. The festival had a printing press onsite to print daily newspapers, and Alex recalls the following morning watching festival organisers drive around the festival site, dropping off newsletters which informed people what had happened, and explained why the “show must go on”.

“I was just fascinated with the organisation, the whole structure of the business, watching it unfold and how it was managed,” Alex, who was working in the London financial markets at the time, said. “It was definitely an eye-opener. I thought, ‘Why am I doing something I don’t like?’ I went straight back to the trading floor and quit on the spot.”

He committed himself instead to the “excitement, raw emotion, and energy” of the festival world.

Alex believes we all have our own personal tastes and preferences for “releasing our energy”, and music festivals are one option, like theatre or sports.

“Visiting theatre and opera houses around the world, and our own beautiful venues in New Zealand, I think ‘these are the rooms that create beauty and raw emotion’,” Alex said.

The energy generated at a festival is almost tangible, he said.

“The energy hangs in the arena after the festival is over. You can almost see it, as an orb or mist. That’s quite a special thing to be aware of.”

Christchurch born and bred, Alex was schooled at Christ’s College and Wanganui Collegiate before completing a Bachelor of Resource Studies at Lincoln College. He spent ten years overseas, and after leaving his finance job he worked on the road crew for a production company in Europe, then took a night course in releasing and marketing music at the University of London.

Once back in New Zealand, Alex and Rhythm & Alps (R&A) co-founder Hamish Pinkham organised the first R&A in the Rakaia Gorge, but Alex said they “quickly learned people don’t go to Methven in their summer holidays”.

It made sense to hold the festival at a popular summer destination like Wanaka. But the festival’s first year in Wanaka (at Robrosa Station in Cardrona Valley) had a rough start. A short time to produce the show and bad weather resulted in negative publicity. The following year brought in half the expected revenue, leaving Alex unable to pay the festival bills.

“It was a really hard time,” he said, “but I never had any doubt about what I was doing.”

In hindsight, Alex believes the rough start was “probably the best thing that could have happened”. He showed his commitment to repaying creditors, and in doing so built “a deep, underlying trust” in the working relationships. “People have a vested interest in it now.”

“Any business has ebbs and flows. We just had a speed bump in the middle,” he said. Alex estimates the festival now pumps between seven and ten million dollars a year into the Southern Lakes economy.

Alex puts a lot of emphasis on continuity of staff and mentoring new staff. There were 900 crew involved in running the show, including artists, and a volunteer contingent of about 200 people.

This was R&A’s eighth year, and the seventh in Wanaka: there were 5,000 people camping and 10,000 people partying on New Year’s Eve. “Every year we try to do it better. I’m pretty big on taking things one step at a time and doing it right.”

“The Wanaka community cares about the environment we live in. We are trying to educate our consumers that disposable consumerism is on the way out,” Alex said.

This year R&A trialled cardboard ‘Kartents’, with about 50 recyclable tents purchased and well-reviewed by users. The festival will be building on this, Alex said.

Cardboard tents made “a bit of a difference”, but the reusable cups also trialled this year made “the big difference”, he said. “It made a massive difference on the ground - not crunching around on plastic cups.”

“It’s about educating consumers to take responsibility for their personal waste. We do have a younger demographic and I have noticed a change.”

Another change Alex is working on is the introduction of drug-testing kits for festival-goers. He’s working closely with the Wanaka police and St John, and is committed to doing due diligence around what is currently a “massive grey area”.

While the festival is working hard to stop people bringing alcohol onsite, some people will choose take other drugs to enhance their experience, Alex said. “It’s not going away. We want educate people to make that choice. If you introduce these [kits] it’s going to reduce problems. There’s a lot of homework to do, but we’re moving forward.”

The average age of festival-goer is 24; there are fewer 18-year-olds; and the behaviour is improving each year, Alex said. “We put on music that appeals to 24 to 50-year-olds. I’m 45 and I felt young in the VIP tent this year.”

Alex played representative rugby for Canterbury when at school, but moved on to other interests in his early 20s. The rugby culture “wasn’t really quite me”, he said, but he was appointed to the board of the Otago Rugby Football Union (ORFU) in 2017 and is enjoying the role, which uses his marketing, promotion and commercial revenue generation experience.

“I think people should be doing a number of things to keep themselves mentally inspired,” he said.

As well as his regular morning skiing sessions at Treble Cone during the winter months, Alex keeps himself inspired with a regular yoga practice. “You need to take yourself away and work on your inner self,” he said, likening the practice to regular car maintenance.

Alex has a “blended family” with wife Misi Sharplin; his daughter Lilyvelvet (13) and son Theo (10), who live in Christchurch with their mother, visit often.

He also gets inspiration during in his “lull zone” of March to June. This March he and Misi are planning to attend a festival in Morocco: a package of accommodation, talks, cuisine and music. “The relaxing party for 40-year-olds,” he said.

It’s not time to relax yet, though: The administration of R&A is 12 months a year; the delivery part is six weeks. It takes a month to build and two weeks to pack down - the pack down is almost over, and Alex has already launched the pre-sale campaign for next year. There are 900 registrations so far.

R&A has consent (with landowners Robrosa Station, Department of Conservation and LINZ) to operate in Cardrona Valley for another decade. Alex reckons, all going well, he’ll be partying there at 55. The “excitement, raw emotion, and energy” of the festival he experienced years ago keeps fuelling him.

PHOTOS: Supplied