Movers and Shakers: The People Behind III Points

A music festival can make an attendee feel as if all the stages, booths, art, and production sprang up from the Earth, like some annual blossom. If done correctly, the festival grounds are crisp and ready for exploration, and the otherworldly production is synced up to the music and night. The staff may take some time to set up the stage for a particular headliner, but when the time comes, the machine fires on all cylinders.

Of course, this is the product of months of planning, from back-and-forth emails to secure the headliner to the numerous “little things,” such as ensuring the festival has water and enough porta-potties. The success of pouring so much sweat and emotion into a festival is often indescribable to its employees. But any feeling of achievement is short-lived when next year is about expansion on one end and the sword of Damocles hanging over on the other, with razor-thin margins and acts of God.

III Points is no stranger to such minutiae. To recap: III Points cofounders David Sinopoli and Ross LaBrie met while working at the Wynwood lounge Bardot in 2011. III Points’ origin is rooted in Bardot’s bookings. The festival’s fellow cofounder, Erica Freshman, invited Sinopoli to be the venue’s music director. LaBrie managed Bardot’s production while also touring as a sound engineer and serving as the head audio engineer at the Adrienne Arsht Center’s studio theater. The three, along with Bardot’s owner, Amir Ben-Zion, envisioned a small festival in Wynwood.

The inaugural festival in 2013 featured talent like James Murphy, Jamie xx, DJ Shadow, and XXYYXX. Although the next two years passed, the festival faced significant challenges in 2016 due to Hurricane Matthew’s 100 mph winds, the Zika virus, and the cancellation of headliners, all of which threatened its viability.

The team still bounced back, increasing the scale of production and performances. They added a third day to the lineup, bringing new hope. COVID-19 then disrupted the festival, but the team again persevered by returning to a two-day format and making adjustments.

Undoubtedly, III Points would simply not exist without fate bringing these three people together. But there is a critical mass of staff members behind III Points that continue to push the boundaries of an avant-garde festival that grows bigger every year.

These are the people who have slept on the festival grounds the week prior, taking calls and answering emails at any time during the months leading up, maneuvering around last-minute emergencies, dismantling trucks and trucks carrying production, and not clocking out well past III Point’s 4 a.m. closing time. New Times spoke to three of the 1700 faceless employees behind making III Points 2025.

Step I: The Bookings

Michelle Granado, III Points booking and artist operations director, has been a part of the festival when it was still a nebulous concept. Her career began with a first footprint at Florida International University’s radio station in 2012. “I just remember being in that office, and one of us saw a listing for artist relations interns at Bardot,” Granado recalls while speaking to New Times.

She began interning for the club, which included booking hotels and picking up artists from the airport. Sinopoli kept Granado on past her school internship and was asked to help blueprint the new festival. “I got on board right in the beginning when they were figuring out the concept, name, and logo. I was David’s booking assistant and handled artists’ relations and hospitality, and just general logistics since the team was so small.”

Granado continued working at Bardot until 2015, when she transitioned to strictly III Points to manage the numerous responsibilities of an emerging festival. After COVID-19, Granado left the festival, but Sinopoli and the team faced challenges in finding a suitable replacement. She returned with a more managerial title and duties for at least six months. She has remained with the festival since and currently holds the position of overseeing booking operations.

She is ultimately faced with the challenge of how talent defines the year. For instance, 2019 could be considered the “hip-hop edition” featuring top talent such as Tyler, the Creator, and A$AP Rocky. Alternatively, last year was marked by its massive electronic influence, with Justice and DJs closing out the Mind Melt main stage.

“We look at what is relevant and what Miami, our community, is pivoting towards,” she explains. “We look at what is current and start with which headliners are available this year.” This year does not have a patented headliner like Justice or Gorillaz, which makes putting a “mark” on what the festival is all the more challenging.

Granado enjoys live music and wants to book more live talent, despite the logistical challenges bands face coming all the way down south. “It’s really the only opportunity to showcase live music. I’d say Turnstile is still a headliner, so we decided to book more rock than the previous year. The lineup became more electronic once we started involving Club Space more [Sinopoli is co-owner of the venue] and started doing more at Mind Melt and the ‘after hours’ at Mind Melt,” which is having DJs play after the last Mind Melt live act.

There’s a common thread that connects all the talent bookings. It’s not just about finding popular artists or stacking predictable openers with closers. Instead, the goal is to create cohesion throughout the festival grounds. “It’s one of the things I love doing, the programming on it, like the progression of each state and making sure it all flows well and not being too predictable. It’s trying to have a more unique progression that still makes sense.”

Like any nightlife veteran, Granado shares a bit of scar tissue from past III Points years. “I remember Hurricane Matthew in 2016. People’s flights were being canceled and stopped at their layover. So we had to book a private jet for Vince Staples from Atlanta. We spoke to a friend’s neighbor, a friend of a friend who happened to own a jet. The things we were most excited for that (edition) ended up being canceled.”

LCD Soundsystem’s cancellation is still a chronic pain. “We were doing the ‘Road to III Points’ tour, and I remember being in the car and David calling me that LCD confirmed. We were crying, and when they canceled, it was all heartbreaking, but it was fine because we eventually got them back.” The bad times are still balanced out by the great moments for Granado, such as booking Yves Tumor at Mind Melt in 2017 and The xx in 2017. “The entire disco ball above us lit up,” she remembers from The XX set.

Every year is a new challenge, and no matter how big the bookings are, there is always a white whale that evades the lineup each year, making the thrill live on. “We try every year for Aphex Twin.”

Stage II: The Logistics

Michelle Concilio is a festival producer for Insomniac Holdings, an international music production company that is a partner behind the festival. “I receive shows nationally and internationally, everything from the cruise shows, smaller festivals, and our partnership shows, including III Points.” Concilio, a Florida native residing in Las Vegas, cut her teeth in the industry, like Granado, through internships.

“I went to Broward College and FIU and needed internship credits, which were partially covered by my internship at the Coconut Creek Casino.” She still needed groundwork experience, and there was an opening for an internship with the Groove Cruise music festival. The company hired her as an event coordinator six months after her internship.

She worked that circuit, eventually leaving to start her own company, and then found her new home with Insomniac in 2017. Her first time working with III Points came three years ago, as an Insomniac producer.

“I make sure that for every III Points member there is an Insomniac counterpart, so that we have an understanding of what each brings to the table.” Concilio helps with the production side and oversees budgeting, safety, site layout, and “making sure everything gets mapped out and built accordingly and delivering the best product possible.”

This year, Concilio remarks that it has been the earliest the team has discussed the show, beginning in March 2025. She also spoke about new layouts that the festival-goers will experience.

“We have a few changes in terms of the layout. We’re getting our old Main Frame stage area back. It’s not going to be a stage, but it’s going to be the covered area that used to be the Main Frame stage; it’s now going to be a pass-through area, and I think that part of the venue is going to be super cool. We are going to activate it and include a ‘vendor village’ and a lot of people from the Miami community will be selling their products.”

Despite friction between the two companies, Concilio believes the two can exist in harmony to deliver the best product for its fans. “There’s no tension. Everyone is looking forward, and everyone is treating each other just the same.” One usually dreads the early-morning meetings, but Concilio looks forward to talking to her East Coast neighbors about planning.

“The most memorable thing is that it is such a family vibe. No production is ever ordinary; everyone comes in and has a different energy and has something to show. It makes it more like a human interaction. Everybody cares about the product and has their heart and soul in it.”

Step III: The Production

You might as well pack it up if the production isn’t good. It simply does not matter how big the headliner is if it does not sound or look good. Luca Sabatini has been III Points’ Technical Manager since 2015. “What I do is all of the artist advancing, stage design, of course, and working with the core team. It’s a collaborative process in terms of the designing, but I’m the one commissioning those designs through and getting them built.”

By “artist advancing,” Sabatini refers to maintaining contact with the artists and designing the stage to meet their needs. Additionally, Sabatini serves as Mind Melt’s stage manager, ensuring the stage operates flawlessly from set to set. He leads a team of roughly four to five people year-round, with an honorable mention to his colleague, Will Cormier, and a production team that gets close to sixty to seventy people in the weeks leading up.

Sabatini is an Italian native. He spent his teenage years in the nightlife scene and, at one point, founded a music festival while living in Italy. He studied liberal arts at the University of Miami and co-founded the sound company, Unreal Sound, with LaBrie.

Sabatini connected with Sinopli in the early days of III Points through Art Basel events. His current role never allows him to detract; each year should be an opportunity to outpace the previous. “This year, I would have had the chance to make the Mind Melt stage smaller with the lineup, but we don’t take steps back. We’re not downgrading it. Ever.”

He remembers setting the stage for heavyweight talent, just as a fighter might recall a prized match. “Goralliaz was ten trucks on day one. The XX was seven trucks on day three,” which was put back-to-back between Gorillaz, Nicolas Jaar, and The XX. “It was momentous to me. I remember it with a child-like sense of excitement and wonder. I remember weeping at the start of The XX. ‘We put it on stage. It’s over. We did it.'”

Recently, the idea of adding big-name DJs to close out Mind Melt, while giving a crowd an open-air dance floor, added another feat that Sabatini has to maneuver. “It’s important to take advantage of the site and transform Mind Melt into this huge dancefloor, and there are good reasons for doing it. But the stage now has no break, and I would use that overnight time to reset and configure for the following day and load in touring production.” 

This year’s edition is smaller, but “Turnstile is still three trucks and I need to load all this stuff out before the DJs close out.” Sabatini believes this is the only main stage that not only doesn’t end first, but also transforms into a rave. “But I now have good plans and measures to make it happen. Mind Melt is a piece of art.”

He also posits that III Points is a bona fide festival, rather than two days of mini-concerts or a big party. According to his canons of construction, a festival must provide “a very curated approach and intention behind it.”

Sure, III Points offers entertainment, but it’s done to a higher calling of discovery, exploration, and enrichment, which he compares only to Sonar in Barcelona or Labyrinth in Japan. Sabatini doesn’t mean to criticize other festivals. Still, he believes III Points offers something different, even if it may be intangible.

The attendee spends about twenty hours out of the year at III Points, makes unforgettable memories, hits up a satellite party, and carries on until this time next year. There are now loyal III Points goers who buy tickets before the lineup comes out, but few forces are as powerful as a III Points staff member’s dedication to their sonic cause.

“The III Points nation is the most important thing to us,” says Sabatini. “For all of us who work at III Points, it’s a matter of life and death. There is nothing we give more importance and attention to and look forward to.”

III Points. Friday, October 17, and Saturday, October 18, at Mana Wynwood, 2217 NW Fifth Ave., Miami; iiipoints.com. Tickets cost $139 to $309 via iiipoints.frontgatetickets.com.