Last Friday marked a major milestone for the GRIDX in Wickreng, which hosted its very first large-scale concert, featuring none other than world-renowned DJ Steve Aoki. Around 1,500 people attended the sold-out show.
For event manager Frank Rippinger, the evening was a particularly proud moment. “Of course we’re extremely proud that we made this happen,” he said. The concert itself came together unexpectedly: “It was almost a coincidence, it just fell into our lap. One morning I got a call asking if we’d be interested, and things moved forward very quickly from there.”
Despite the short notice, weeks of preparation went into the event. Rippinger and his 12-person team, previously focused mainly on corporate events at GRIDX, had to adapt to an entirely new scale, from logistics and security planning to meeting the artist’s technical requirements. And then there were Aoki’s famous cakes.
“You get very precise instructions: how the cake should look, what it should be made of, its size, weight, and even what should be written on it. And we had to produce ten of them,” Rippinger explained. Known as “caking,” the act of throwing cakes into the crowd is one of Aoki’s trademarks.
On stage, Aoki delivered a high-energy performance, placing strong emphasis on connecting with the audience. “I’m here to connect with the audience,” he said, adding that there’s no better way to do so than through music. “That’s going to be the greatest connective tissue between you and the person in the crowd.”
When it comes to his iconic cake-throwing, Aoki says he follows a specific method: “If it’s a certain size and a certain weight, I can get headshots with pretty much dead-on accuracy, even from quite far away.” He added that some promoters don’t always follow the guidelines: “So I have to adjust.”
With this event, GRIDX is also beginning to define its place in Luxembourg’s live music scene. However, it does not see itself as a direct competitor to established venues. “Definitely not a competitor, but complementary,” Rippinger stressed, describing the venue’s ambition to position itself as a flexible, multi-functional space alongside the country’s major concert halls.
Following this successful debut, the outlook is clearly positive. “We’re extremely satisfied (…) I think this has a future,” Rippinger concluded. Whether GRIDX will truly establish itself as a new concert hotspot remains to be seen in the years ahead.
