YUTHANA “PA TED” BOONORM Senior Vice President Showbiz at GMM Grammy | Organiser, Big Mountain Music Festival

Yuthana “Pa Ted” Boonorm is best known as the organiser of the Big Mountain Music Festival in Nakhon Ratchasima, considered to be one of the most highly anticipated annual music events for fans of Thai music. He is also known for one of the biggest, and highly publicised, concert tour cancellations in recent memory. In 2014, Pa Ted set out to organise an ambitious concert tour for Bodyslam, arguably the most popular Thai rock music act in the country at the time.

The tour, which was to promote their sixth studio album, Dharmajati, would have seen the five-member group perform 35 shows across 30 provinces nationwide. Pa Ted was confident that because of the band’s peak in popularity, as well as the low ticket price of 900 Baht, the shows would be guaranteed to sell out. The tour ultimately sold out in only two cities – Bangkok and Chonburi. All remaining shows managed to sell less than 1,000 tickets, far short of the 3,500-person capacity of each venue.

After the band performed just 11 shows in the tour, Pa Ted and his team made the ultimate decision to cancel the remaining 21 concerts. Although the tour itself yielded a loss of 20 million Baht, had it continued they would have lost a total of 60 million. His daughter, at the time, reminded him of the sage advice he always gave others which he should now be giving himself: “Whether we succeed or fail at doing what we love, we are still surrounded by what we love”.

Pa Ted has since put the whole ordeal behind him, and is now kept quite busy successfully organising the annual (and very) sold-out Big Mountain music festival.