Kyle Hartman (from his Facebook page)
By Kyle Harris, Westword | A promoter who has dedicated his young life to championing musicians in Denver and beyond, Kyle Hartman is excited about the coronavirus vaccines. He hopes that within the next year, they allow him to get back to cultivating a rich future for independent music at home and beyond.
Hartman books bands for festivals and bars, and he runs his own talent agency, Future Garden, which works on growing an international audience for the artists he represents, almost all of them local. This means that his livelihood is tied to how and when concerts return. Meanwhile, for the past eleven months, he’s been focusing on keeping music alive through the shutdowns and nearly impossible circumstances.
“I have no words,” he says. “This year has been something else.”
Hartman has been a force on the scene for around half a decade, coming of age as a talent buyer at a time when the city was garnering national acclaim as a live-music destination. He got his start running the street team for the Underground Music Showcase and worked his way up to being a talent buyer, taking the reins not long after event-promotion company Two Parts took over the annual summer festival from the Denver Post. He would have booked the 2020 edition — if it had happened.
He also spent nearly a year as a talent buyer for the Lion’s Lair, legacy music promoter Doug Kauffman’s dive bar, and in the past year, he replaced Tony Mason as the talent buyer at the Larimer Lounge, Globe Hall and Lost Lake, venues independently owned and run by AEG Presents Rocky Mountains vice president Scott Campbell and his wife, Gwen Campbell. The Campbells are ebullient about what Hartman is bringing to their clubs, even as they operate at reduced capacity. “He is amazing,” says Scott.
And it’s not just as a talent buyer that Hartman has expanded his reach in the music scene.
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Read the whole story here:
https://www.westword.com/music/denver-talent-buyer-kyle-hartman-keeps-growing-future-garden-11856313