After two years of virtual festivals, the Bacchanal Student Committee has announced the spring concert will be held in-person but off-campus at Hell’s Kitchen music venue Terminal 5.

Last night, Bacchanal announced via Instagram the festival will return to an in-person format for the first time since 2019. This year, the annual spring concert will take place on April 2 at The Bowery Presents: Terminal 5, an indoor concert venue in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. In their statement last night, Bacchanal organizers alluded to the fact that the festival will also contain on-campus programming, but have not yet shared additional details. The festival, organized by the Bacchanal Student Committee, was held virtually in both 2020 and 2021. Additional information about this year’s spring concert, including ticketing information and featured artists, will be released in the coming weeks. 

This return to an in-person format comes as Columbia has begun to lift its own COVID-19 restrictions. Last week, citing consistently low infection rates, the University announced that masks will become optional inside all Columbia University buildings as of March 14, with Barnard quickly announcing a similar policy. 

Bacchanal’s decision to hold the spring concert at Terminal 5 mirrors a pre-COVID-19 effort to permanently move the concert off-campus. In December 2019, the Bacchanal student committee announced plans for their Spring 2020 concert to be held at Terminal 5, after conducting a survey allowing students to vote on the potential change. In their official statement at the time, Bacchanal argued that “turning Low Plaza into a concert venue is a costly venture,” and that moving the event off-campus allowed more of the organization’s budget to be allocated towards compensating artists. However, the Spring 2020 concert was eventually moved to a virtual format in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bacchanal via Bwarchives