This weekend Southport boy Sandro Charmers made history by opening, on the main stage, the Amsterdam Open Air Festival.
He is just 13-years old and the youngest UK DJ ever to open a festival – anywhere in the world.
Sandro, a pupil at Birkdale High School, in Southport has been learning to DJ at school as part of the FutureDJs programme.
DJ-ing is part of the national curriculum and can be included in music teaching, however most schools don’t have the equipment or the expertise to teach it. So, Birkdale High School called in FutureDJs to help. FutureDJs supply professional DJ tutors to teach a course developed with classical musicians (to be published by Faber Music later this year) and provide industry standard kit for free into the schools thanks to their partnership with Pioneer DJ.
Sandro has been taking part in the programme for two years with FutureDJs’ visiting school music tutor Max Carton. Through his dedication to the art-form, Sandro has quickly mastered the skill set required to become an exciting and versatile young DJ.
Founders and professional DJs Austen and Scott Smart have been running incubator days with ID-T, one of the largest festival organisers in the world. Their festivals, including Mysteryland and Welcome To The Future, attract around 1m people per year.
Sandro excelled at the most recent incubator day led Mark Blundell AKA DJ Mark One, former DJ to Texas and Madonna, and was invited by Amsterdam Open Air festival to perform a one hour 15 minute set. No small feat for a 13-year-old who’d not only never played at a festival before, but had never even been to one. The stage he was opening would eventually climax with international superstar DJ/producers, Claptone and DJ EZ — some of the biggest names in the DJ world.
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