Anna and the Heroes of the Arena

WITH A MASTER IN MANAGEMENT IN ARTS, CULTURE, MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT, ANNA ZO WORKED IN THE ORGANIZATION OF HEROES, THE CONCERT IN STREAMING AND LIVE THAT BROUGHT TOGETHER THE BEST OF ITALIAN MUSIC AT THE VERONA ARENA


Digitization is the future of music. Or, better, digitization and streaming events, with their infinite potential, in combination with the live performances in large and famous locations. Their emotional impact and evocative settings represent the direction in which big shows seem to be moving, in view of a not-so-distant future. So thinks Anna Zo, 24, project manager of Music Innovation Hub, and Bocconi alumna first in Management for Arts, Culture and Communication, and then a Master in Management in Arts, Culture, Media and Entertainment.

In recent months she has been very busy organizing Heroes, the largest paid live streaming concert ever broadcast in Italy. The even brought together about forty artists at the Verona Arena on Sunday 6 September for the noble cause of raising funds to support the music sector hard hit by Covid19, including names like Fedez, Achille Lauro, Ghali, Diodato, Elodie and many others. "It’s a new formula for Italy that proved to be very successful", explains Anna Zo, who has had a passion for art and culture from an early age, even if, as she admits, "I went from being a protagonist on the stage ("I studied dance and guitar") to managing behind the scenes. The organizational and planning aspects of a show like that are really very complex because of the many implications they have".

Heroes recorded about 30,000 streaming codes distributed, and tickets to attend the concert in person were gobbled up in a instant – just 1,500 of them.  It was impossible to sell more because of the restrictions due to the pandemic: "But to that number must be added the 2 thousand health workers that we invited to thank them for the extraordinary work they, together with their colleagues, are doing in these dramatic circumstances ".

A truly very rewarding commitment, from a personal and professional point of view: "We are a small company, eight people in all, started just two years ago, and we were called to manage the European fund set up by Spotify for Italy to support music companies. Working with the great managers of the sector, with top-level artists and technicians, was exciting and rewarding at the same time. It was also an opportunity to create a synergy between small players like us and the big players in the sector, a synergy that can, at least I hope, be the first step towards other initiatives ".

The music sector, so fragmented and not very homogeneous, as we often hear, is not the easiest environment for a young novice manager. But there are also advantages. "When you leave university, you have a well-defined approach, certain rules, guidelines to follow. In an environment as unstructured as that of the music industry, sometimes this destabilizes you, because you don't always find yourself doing what you have studied. But it's just a matter of adapting ”, continues Anna,“ and then what seem like disadvantages become opportunities, because you discover that there is also great room to maneuver and space to create and to build ”.
 

by Davide Ripamonti
Translated by Richard Greenslade