Sonic Pie Productions Marks Five Years of Business in Durham This Weekend

The music industry is notoriously dominated by dudes, but this weekend, one woman is celebrating her success as an independent promoter—and looking toward expanding her business.

Tess Mangum Ocaña runs Sonic Pie Productions, staging and promoting shows in the Triangle and all over North Carolina. She’s served stints booking for The ArtsCenter (for which the INDY gave her an Arts Award in 2012) and with Casbah (which is now Social Games and Brews), but more recently, she’s worked with the Art of Cool Festival, the Festival for the Eno, and the International Bluegrass Music Association’s annual World of Bluegrass festival downtown. One of her biggest current projects is booking the annual free summer music series in Durham Central Park, which begins on June 8 and runs through late August.

Ocaña is marking the anniversary with a party at The Rickhouse in Durham on Sunday afternoon. It’s free and open to the public, and features a performance from Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba that begins at 3:15 p.m. But even as the celebration approaches, Ocaña is still looking toward growing Sonic Pie into something bigger and better—she’s stepping into regional production with Hippie Fest, a series with stops in North and South Carolina, as well as in Michigan and Ohio.