Though he usually puts in long hours as Revelry Music and Arts Festival’s executive director, University of Wisconsin-Madison sophomore Josh Levin occasionally gets a break. Earlier this month, for instance, he had what he described as a “light week” consisting of 13 hour-long meetings.
As the leader of Revelry’s executive planning committee since September 2013, Levin’s main responsibilities include managing various subcommittees, overseeing marketing and logistics and collaborating with a talent-buying company to book all performing acts for the festival.
Levin has been involved with Revelry since its inception last year, when he served as the event’s operations director.
A fan of Madison’s rich music culture, Levin said he has greatly benefitted from the opportunities Revelry has allotted him.
“Other than the fact that we get so much great music, the really great thing about the music scene [in Madison] is that it’s accessible,” he explained. “I’ve become very close with a lot of these promoters and they … do a good job of inviting students to come in and see what real-life talent buying is like and what promoting is like.”
Levin added that his work with Revelry has influenced his future career plans and he hopes to expand ‘XXIV,” a live event production company he co-created during his sophomore year of high school, into “an empire of production.”
“If I can go around planning music festivals all around the country for the rest of my life, I would die a happy guy,” he said.
Levin said his favorite thing about Revelry is its tendency to appeal to all members of the student body.
“What it really offers is … a new angle of camaraderie that the school didn’t have before,” Levin said. “It’s really an opportunity for everybody to get out there and have fun crossing lines of divisions that maybe we have in our social lives sometimes and really just allows everybody to party together, which to me just sounds like an awesome time.”
Levin said he has greatly enjoyed helping create Revelry’s current image, yet he sees the festival’s brand an ever-evolving. While he plans to remain involved in some capacity, he said he intends to step down from the position of executive director in favor of new leadership.
“Sometimes visions need to change,” he said. “I think that there’s other great people that we’ve worked with here at the university that have the ability to shape it to be an awesome festival in many other ways.”
