Delran native performs at Lollapalooza festival in Chicago
Performing at the same festival with headliners like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Billie Eilish was a dream come true for Delran native Jeremy Schoblocher, who performed at Lollapalooza in Chicago’s Grant Park on Aug. 4.
Schoblocher’s performance as a bassist for Tyler Christian’s band was associated with the Berklee Popular Music Institute (BPMI) in Boston. He connected with Christian in 2021 for one of the first shows at Berklee and the partnership has endured.
With nine stages and 170 plus bands from all over the world, Lollapalooza festival “makes hands wave, heads nod, and crowds holla,” according to its website.
This year marked Schoblocher’s second time at the festival. He graduated from the Berklee College of Music with a degree in contemporary writing and production in 2022. As part of the music school’s program, he and a group of peers got to take a course that connected them with Berklee-affiliated acts from the North American festival.
The school offers a minor in the business of live music and a three-semester experiential education program, BPMI Live, that takes students from the classroom to the festival stage, according to Schoblocher.
“Participants in BPMI Live interface with all facets of the music industry, working in A&R (artist and repertoire), artist development, booking, promotion, social media, sponsorship, and live shows,” he explained.
Schoblocher connected with music at a young age.
“I started playing (music) around age 9 through the school band program,” he recalled.
Schoblocher and his classmates found it hard to contain their excitement before Lollapalooza.
“Our whole team is going as hard as we possibly can to raise our show’s production value to a pro-level,” he noted.
While most Berklee classes take place in the course of one semester, BPMI runs on a three semester, full-year cycle. In the fall semester, the class selects the artists and splits up into management teams. In the spring, students work on artist development, marketing and digital presence, among other areas.
For the final semester – summer and early fall – teams rehearse with the artists to prepare them for the festival stage, a much different experience than a club show, and accompany them to each festival to handle on-site promotion, production, and tour management.
The BPMI program has afforded Schoblocher quite a few gigs. He played Lollapalooza last year and performed with the artists Aiida and Dakota Cohen, the latter as a playback engineer. He recently came off a tour with Ava Della Pietra.
As for the future, Schoblocher said he would love to connect with more artists, players, and engineers.
“I also really want to see Tyler’s (Christian’s) music take off and hopefully get to tour to a bunch of places.”
