1 week ago
12
Art Director Norbert Bueno offers a glimpse into the reconceptualized M3F experience debuting March 6-7.
M3F, Phoenix‘s community-driven music escape, is preparing to welcome music lovers to its most ambitious festival to date, as it brings its ethos of “Art Comes First” to life. Returning to Steele Indian School Park on March 6-7, the 23rd edition of the nonprofit festival will deliver a fully immersive experience with the launch of two reimagined stages.
Making waves on social media with the announcement of its Vista revamp, the long-running event will welcome Mau P, Peggy Gou, Big Wild, Chris Lorenzo, and The Knocks for the debut of the highly curated stage.
Along with a new main stage, M3F has announced the retheming of their smallest festival stage. Now known as Signal 33 @ Cosmic, the lakeside dancefloor will breathe new life into the park with performances from jigitz, RaeCola, salute, and TOKiMONSTA.
Contracted by M3F to transform the backdrop for its star-studded performances, Norbert Bueno of Oh Wow Company has been the driving force behind bringing the art-driven stages to life. Ahead of M3F’s all-day dance party, we sat down with him to get an inside look at what to expect at the 2026 edition.
Lock in your weekend at M3F by visiting Tixr, hear the sounds that influenced this year’s stage designs, and read on for a behind-the-scenes look at this year’s festival with M3F Art Director Norbert Bueno.
As art director for Oh Wow Company, how does your background lend to you working on this year’s M3F?
I’ve been working with Oh Wow Company for about four or five years. I’m a musician and music producer. That’s where I came from. I guess my special power is that I understand both the artist side and the back-end production side of things.
I’ve always been creative. I always liked to create experiences with people. Now, I’m still in the music industry, but it shifted from me performing to being more behind the scenes.
I love what I do, and we get to build and create special moments. Yeah, it can get a little stressful, but it’s part of the job.
In years prior, the stages at M3F have been pretty standard as far as festivals go. What led the festival to branch out and create these newly imagined stages that will bring the music to life in a new way?
At M3F, art has always been a leading factor. Whether we’re doing photo ops or different installations that activate places around the festival site, we always want to allow the art to come first, as well as the music.
The lineups are always well curated and very dynamic. You can hang out at a chill set or see a high-energy headliner. So with all that in mind, we’re thinking, “How can we enhance the whole festival as one?” That’s when we started talking with artists, collaborating with them, and thinking about how we can expand the production aspect of the stages to create some sort of immersive, energetic moment.
One of the inspirations came from this year’s lineup, which is pretty electronic dance heavy. Dance music comes from small spaces where the focus is on the music and the lighting. It’s really intimate, and when you’re there, you are in the moment. So we wanted to recreate that feeling, that same type of energy, at M3F in a large festival setting. And that’s how we came up with the concept of the lighting towers.
We’re not trying to shrink the space; we’re trying to create one cohesive space, where no matter if you’re up front, the middle, or back, you get your own special M3F moment where you’re immersed within the production.
The cool thing is, all the lighting towers will be communicating with each other, so it’s this one big moment that will happen from the stage to the middle to the back. We’re excited for it.
M3F Vista Main Stage RenderingThe festival recently announced this year’s debut of the Signal 33 @ Cosmic stage, blending production aspects with the stage’s natural surroundings. How is activating the landscape of the park, including the lake, going to change the experience for festival-goers?
When you’re working with parks, you want to be able to utilize the setting. At this park specifically, there’s a lake in the middle. Signal 33’s backdrop is the water, and we wanted to find a way to extend that.
We’re utilizing reflective towers, sort of in the back, to create one space where the water is reflective. You’ll be able to see past the stage and view the orbs, which will be floating across the water. And then we’ll have lighting moving across the water that will add to that experience as well. So it’s a little bit more abstract.
We really wanted to just create one big space that brought the water into the dancefloor in some way. The inspiration was utilizing the reflection off the water with lighting, and then kind of expanding that same type of visual onto the stage and then into the dancefloor.
Also, what makes this stage cool is that we have nonstop music pretty much the whole day. It’ll be playing music back to back, so that’ll be fun.
M3F’s motto is “Art Comes First.” Are there any art pieces that bring the grounds to life during the day?
We’ll definitely have a couple of other art activations happening on site. We’re building out this new M3F sign that will be be one of our staple art pieces.
Obviously, during the day we can’t really use stage lighting. That’s why we’re adding reflective surfaces. You get the sun reflecting off the mirrors and orbs we’re incorporating that will still communicate some sort of energy.
I think what’s unique about Signal 33 is that as you go inside the festival, that’s the first thing you’ll see. To get to the mainstage or other places, you kind of have to walk past it, and that’s where we’re activating the water area with the floating orbs. So it’ll give you a colorful activation during the day as well.
I think the park allows us to add color here and there, but everything will come to life once it gets a little darker, for sure. We’ll have things lit up, and it’ll create this one cohesive moment.
What does prepping for the festival look like for you as Art Director?
We’ll be there the week of and have the park to ourselves. That’s when we’ll start building everything. Right now, we’re working on making sure we have everything we need to make it happen.
There’s a lot of shifting that happens on site, and that’s the other thing that makes it fun, at least for me. We don’t really have a testing area. Our testing happens on the setup, so then we have to shift and figure things out on the fly. So that’s part of curating it to the space as well. Like, the towers and more production-specific things, of course, are pre-built, but there are still things that we have to create on site, which is cool.
For those who are still on the fence and haven’t bought tickets, why is this year worth attending?
M3F has been around for nearly 25 years, so we’re not new to this. We’re not necessarily introducing anything new, but this year’s M3F is special because we are enhancing the experience with production elements that we haven’t done before. So come and experience that for the first time with everybody else.
Also, the lineup is really, really solid. It’s very well curated and incredibly dynamic. So you can go from Day Dream, which has more of an indie vibe, to partying all day at Signal 33, and then, of course, get ready for main stage performance headliners like Mau P and Peggy.
English (US) · 