MIAMI – David Sinopoli is a Miami music trailblazer, who developed with his partners, five popular live music venues.
Under one roof in downtown Miami is Floyd, a small, speak easy style venue for intimate sessions. There is also The Ground, a 700-person live ticketed music venue featuring mostly local bands. There is also Club Space, the hugely popular dance spot with an outside terrace featuring primarily electronic music. With a 24-hour license, there is no curfew.
“So, around sunrise the sun peaks in and the plants get illuminated and that is the magic of the terrace,” Sinopoli pointed out on the rooftop of Club Space to CBS4’s Lisa Petrillo as they talked downstairs in his intimate lounge known as Floyd.
Petrillo asked him how he feels that his spots are “the” places for live music in town.
“It’s great. I feel very fortunate,” he said. “I started out just wanting to do really good shows at small venues and we’ve grown with the city. So as the city has grown, I feel like I feel like I’m a caretaker. I feel like I need to provide the opportunities as possible to the live music scene.”
Back in 2013, Sinopoli founded III Points Music Festival.
It’s a two-day multi-genre festival held at Mana Wynwood focusing on big name national artists, emerging artists and his #1 passion, local talent.
“I heard a lot of complaints and frustrations from the local scene that they didn’t have enough opportunities to grow their careers here,” Sinopoli said. “A lot of them are moving to LA, Austin, or to New York or Nashville. Also, a lot from fans saying we want to see these bands. Why isn’t anything ever coming to Miami? So, it was a big kind of like right in front of me that we have to figure out something that kills two birds with one stone. So, that was a genesis of III Points.”
“So, it started as a small festival and nine years later, I could say it’s getting up there with some of the big-name festivals in the country,” said Petrillo.
“It’s creeping up. It’s dangerously looming. We don’t want to get too big,” he said. “Once you get too big you lose a little bit of the magic of the intimacy that III Points is. The last year, over the two days, we did about 50,000 people.”
Since its debut, Sinopoli has showcased such artists as James Blake, Tyler the Creator, Erykah Badu and more. Last year, more than 100 artists performed.
The lineup on the six stages is a blend of well-known talent performing in prime time while showcasing the home-grown talent before them.
“I go for the unicorns, and I look at everything that’s been emerging in the last year, like really what is the pulse and the sound,” he said. “Then, I start looking at how the locals can integrate and mesh on all of these stages. So, the familiar sounds that are headlining, we then have some familiar sounds from Miami before them. So, we can have that identification of our own rock stars in our backyard.”
Sinopoli and his team are finalizing the lineup now for III Points October 21-22, which includes half of the acts from South Florida.
