Keene Music Festival canceled this year | Local News | sentinelsource.com – The Keene Sentinel

The Keene Music Festival has been canceled this year.

Keene Mayor George Hansel announced during the City Council’s meeting Thursday that the festival’s organizers have decided not to hold the event in 2020.

The news comes about a week after the council’s Planning, Licenses and Development Committee reviewed a letter from organizers proposing a scaled-down version of the festival due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pablo Fleischmann, the festival’s director, told The Sentinel on Friday morning canceling the festival was the smartest and safest move for the community.

“We have tried for the last three months to come up with a way that we could pull it off in a safe way by formulating a smaller footprint,” he said, “but it’s just apparent that … it’s unclear if it would be a responsible move to proceed and invite people to congregate in public.”

The smaller event, which would have used fewer stages, had been pitched for Sept. 5.

The free, annual festival started in 2000, bringing in musicians from all over New England. The event usually features more than 80 bands at 13 performance areas spread across downtown Keene, according the event’s Facebook page.