A&O Comes Full Circle at Bethel Woods Pavilion
July 23rd, 2016
Alpha & Omega has been associated for a long time with The Pavilion amphitheater at Bethel Woods in upstate New York. It opened to the public on July 4, 2006, with a performance by the New York Philharmonic. Since then, Bethel Woods has presented a wide variety of musical genres and performers including Bob Dylan, Elton John, Phish, The Eagles, Zac Brown Band, and James Taylor, Jimmy Buffett, and Luke Bryan among countless others.
The Bethel Woods facility, a part of the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, joined a storied list of amphitheaters on our client roster in 2016. We have greeted fans at The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands, Texas, for the last 26 years. Historic venues like Shoreline in California and The Gorge in Washington helped us fine tune our expertise in providing security for amphitheater patrons and we have added many venues to the list over the years.
Bethel Woods Pavilion is situated on a 37-acre field that is part of the 600-acre site of the original Woodstock festival that attracted almost half a million fans in August of 1969. Woodstock is a pivotal event in the history of music festivals, providing a blueprint for the many festivals now a regular part of the year-round music offerings across the country and internationally.
Alpha & Omega shared in the historical progression of Woodstock and Bethel Woods providing security for the 25th anniversary of the original Woodstock music festival. The Woodstock ’94 Arts and Music Festival was staged in nearby Saugerties from August 12 to 14, 1994. The festival featured 30 bands and an estimated 450,000 people in attendance.
The ’94 Woodstock site created the third largest “city” in New York during the festival weekend. Alpha & Omega Troopers joined the New York State Police and several private security firms to manage the sizable crowd (the first time ever for a private mounted patrol to be contracted for a music festival.) A strong relationship was forged with the New York State Police, a bond that continues today. Troopers were responsible for traffic management, parking patrols, opening passageways for band members and VIPs, clearing landing zones for helicopters, and monitoring crowd movement and behavior.
Thus, the A&O festival division was born. Because of this festival, a staff member of Phish learned of the mounted patrol and has hired A&O for all their festivals since, which led the way for our involvement with Bonnaroo, Coachella, Stagecoach, and many others. So, in a way, adding Bethel Woods to our client list felt like a homecoming. We look forward to a long relationship with the venue where everything dear to music festival patrons began.
