Sonfest
Sonfest was an annual 3–4 day Christian music festival held in Boonah, Queensland, Queensland, Australia from 2000 to 2005.
The event was created by record executive Dale Bray and creative director Steven Dix. Sonfest is also the name of an annual music festival held on the campus of Mount Vernon Nazarene University in Mount Vernon, Ohio.[1]
It featured artists and speakers from Australia and around the world. Thousands came from all over Australia for the festival, some people coming from as far as New Zealand. Some big Christian names that have been at Sonfest include Relient K, Pillar, Third Day, Audio Adrenaline, Fido, The Supertones, Wishful Thinking, Newsboys, Jars of Clay and many more. It was said that during Sonfest the population of Boonah tripled.
In 2006 the annual Sonfest Festival was canceled with the following message on the Sonfest website:
- Thank you to everyone who has been enquiring about Sonfest 2006. Unfortunately Sonfest Music Festival will not be on in 2006. We thank everyone for their support of Sonfest for the past 5 years and understand that there will be a lot of speculation regarding why this has happened. Please know that this decision was not made lightly and did not come about due to one overwhelming reason, rather there were several factors that have led to this. Sonfest is still very dedicated to touring the top Christian bands from around the world and we still hope to be able to restart Sonfest in the future.
2009 Event
In early November, Easterfest (formerly the Australian Gospel Music Festival) announced on their website that Sonfest would return in January 2009. On 26 January 2009, Sonfest was revived as a one-day festival held at Citipointe Church at Mansfield, Brisbane. It was claimed by organisers that they would gauge interest in the one-day event to determine the resurrection of a longer event, however the lack of headline artists (the only international artist being Family Force Five) and the short time period resulted in reduced attendance. Sonfest did not return in 2010.