Bandier students turn Castle into ‘Ibiza-style’ party with Dean Turnley set
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Dusk fell over one of Syracuse University’s landmark party spots, an apartment complex known as Castle Court. The parking lot was taken over by a massive stage fitted with lasers, smoke machines and, most importantly, a DJ booth.
Behind the booth was Dean Turnley, a fast-rising Australian DJ who has played the likes of Tomorrowland Belgium and Circoloco in Ibiza. He came from Ibiza on Monday to Syracuse, performing Friday night to around 1,000 ticket holders at Castle.
Next to the booth, looking out at the crowd, stood the two SU students who made it all happen — Aaron Larit and Braden Miller.
“We always wanted this exact vibe. We’re trying to bring almost like a European Ibiza-style curated night to Syracuse, which is a market that typically doesn’t have experiences like that,” Miller said. “And then we’ve always just been in love with the Castle space.”
The two senior Bandier Program students co-founded music event planning and promotion company Blank Entertainment with the goal of bringing music experiences just like Friday’s to SU. The Turnley-headlined concert was the first live concert held at Castle in five years, Miller said.
Larit and Miller met freshman year through the tight-knit nature of the Bandier program. The pair clicked immediately, bonding over their love of music. Larit leans toward the Grateful Dead while Miller favors Depeche Mode, but they find a middle ground between their favorites.
Both of them grew up around music. For Larit, the connection is genetic. His grandfather was a drummer and his father has been to roughly 3,000 concerts. Miller had a similar experience, being taken to concerts since he was four years old and his parents constantly blasting music at all hours.
Miller realized he wanted to curate music events in high school when he started going to multi-day music festivals. While the artists performed at the events and everyone was watching the stage, Miller would turn around and watch the crowd.
“I realized that it’s a space where no matter what you’re going through, you leave your problems at the door,” Miller said. “You walk in, you’re just like in that moment, so I realized that I wanted to create that moment for people.”
Midway through Larit and Miller’s sophomore years at SU, wanting to get a head start on their senior capstone project, they had the idea to start a company geared toward curating music experiences for the SU community.
The idea was set in stone — the name Blank Entertainment came two months later, along with the company’s tagline “Everything Starts Blank.”
“Everything starts blank, so it’s just us really finding each event, each artist that we work with, coming from bare bones and building them to what they are,” Miller said.
Attendees at Castle Court’s DJ event dance to the music on Friday. The crowd, which was filled with Syracuse University students and some locals, featured around 1,000 ticket holders. Eli Schwartz | Asst. Photo Editor
Blank Entertainment began collaborating with ZMM Events when planning their show last year at Westcott Theater featuring DJ ACRAZE. ZMM is run by two men not much older than Miller and Larit — founded by Tulane University senior Zach Maitlin and co-owned by Tulane University alum Shane Michelon.
Miller’s connection to ZMM goes back to preschool. Growing up in South Orange, New Jersey, Miller shared a classroom with Maitlin far before either of them went down the music-promoter path. Now, Miller and Larit have been given “free rein” of the Syracuse leg of ZMM’s Night School Tour, a nationwide set of shows bringing DJs to schools across the country.
Miller and Larit paid for a percentage of the Castle event, while their co-promoter ZMM helped fund the rest.
Although Miller and Larit planned the Westcott Theater event last year, having a concert at Castle was always their end goal. While studying abroad in Spain last spring — Miller in Barcelona and Larit in Madrid — the two began planning the Castle performance months in advance.
Castle is known for hosting tailgates before football games, and there is always a risk that those can get shut down. But with paying customers, Larit and Miller couldn’t take that chance.
They sent a proposal to Victory at Syracuse, the leasing company that owns Castle, when they were still in Spain. After receiving approval from Victory, Larit and Miller began cold-calling the city of Syracuse in June, connecting with the city’s fire marshals, Syracuse Police Department chief and obtaining a special events permit for full permission to operate their concert.
“We came wildly overprepared to every single meeting we had, every call, and we just worked hard enough until they had no choice,” Larit said. “They had no good reason to say no.”
In Spain, Miller and Larit became drawn to 1990s house music and European sounds — Turnley fit right into that equation. Through ZMM, they emailed Turnley’s manager and booked him months ago.
“It was a pretty crazy turn of events because he’s a much bigger artist now than at the time of the offer,” Miller said. “He had his breakout track ‘Actin’ Tough,’ mixed with a couple cool appearances.”
Making sure Turnley was satisfied with his time in Syracuse was also their personal responsibility. Outside of the paycheck, Turnley’s only requests for his show were some tequila, bananas and coconut water. His green room was in Miller’s apartment at Castle, which the two weren’t sure how he would feel about.
“Maybe get a little clean going before,” Larit suggested.
On Friday, the two were running around all day, dealing with equipment and getting everything set up. Ezra Atkins, a junior film student at the College of Visual and Performing Arts and Larit’s former roommate, decided to film the duo’s day leading up to the event to showcase everything they did.
The concert offered a functional bar, porta-potties and free goods from Red Bull and Marshall Street’s Dazed Cannabis Dispensary. There was heavy police and security presence, courtesy of Miller and Larit’s overpreparedness, and Castle’s parking lot was packed with crowds by 8 p.m.
“I think it’s incredible. I think it’s great for morale,” Atkins said. “Syracuse hasn’t had an event of this magnitude in a long time, so it’s really exciting to see something like this happening, especially in Castle.”
Syracuse University seniors Aaron Larit and Braden Miller pose in front of the Castle Court crowd with their arms around each other. Larit and Miller, both Bandier Program students, co-founded the music event planning and promotion company Blank Entertainment around two years ago. Eli Schwartz | Asst. Photo Editor
Officially, Larit and Miller are the only employees of Blank Entertainment, but they’ve had a lot of help with promotion from friends and fellow Bandier students. One of them was SU junior and political science major Jackson Klingsberg, who’s in the same fraternity as Larit. Klingsberg was one of the SU student DJs who opened for Turnley, in part as payment for all his help with promotion.
Klingsberg started DJing his senior year of high school and bought his own board freshman year of college. He DJed Friday night for free, a trend with all of his gigs.
“I don’t have any intention of getting paid out of it or anything, but it’s always great knowing that what you do can make other people happy and move,” Klingsberg said.
After his set, Klingsberg was looking forward to dancing with the crowd and taking in the joy from a new angle. He performed alongside DJ MAD, who has toured the country for around four and a half years, DJing professionally at college campuses in collaboration with ZMM’s Night School Tour.
DJ MAD, who’s originally from Boca Raton, Florida, was skeptical at first about the energy SU students would bring.
“I’ve never been to Syracuse like that before. To me, it was just like a quiet town,” DJ MAD said. “But you guys have a good time. Syracuse knows how to party.”
The crowd, primarily SU students with a few locals mixed in, paid between $25 and $80 for the experience. Both Larit and Miller’s parents also came out to support the culmination of their sons’ hard work.
“I think we should have events every weekend,” SU freshman attendee Luke Lehouiller said.
Lehouiller came with fellow freshmen James Barbash, Silas Birnie and Jacob Lax, who were looking for something to do Friday night. All plan to rush in the spring, but until then, frat parties are off-limits.
SU sophomore engineering students Guillermo Munoz and Jaylen Forde said they typically don’t have much free time to party, so they appreciated the Castle performance. Munoz heard about the event through a friend and — with his birthday being the day prior — thought it would be a fun time to go out.
“I think it’s a great opportunity, especially for people not in Greek life,” Forde said. “In engineering, you’re super busy, so it might be hard to rush and like pledge and all that.”
Beyond bringing house music to SU and artists like Turnley, the central goal of Blank Entertainment is building up the community, Larit said.
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As members of Greek life — Miller in Zeta Beta Tau and Larit in Sigma Alpha Epsilon — the two have noticed a level of exclusivity within that world. And they both wanted to put on an event for everyone, not just fraternity members.
“A frat party, like that’s fun, whatever. But when you have a huge artist coming in, and there’s 2,000 people, and you’re seeing people maybe you’re friends with, but you don’t see every weekend, like that’s a really cool experience,” Larit said. “Bringing that to Syracuse was kind of what the original idea was.”
SU junior Gabby Wiggetman learned about the event through her sorority and arrived early to support Klingsberg, a friend of hers. She lives at Castle and loved having live music right outside her door.
“I think it’s fun to get together with everyone and see the whole like Syracuse community come together,” Wiggetman said.
SU senior Camila Santiago came to support her best friend and DJ Lauren Ervin. Ervin started learning how to DJ freshman year, and just three years later, she opened for Turnley.
“It’s just a really great event for the dance community and just the house music community in Syracuse,” Santiago said. “1,000% we would love to have more, and I think it’s just like a really cool opportunity again for people to enjoy outdoor events that are not the bar or something like that.”
On the stage, with arms around each other’s shoulders, Miller and Larit experienced the energy of the crowd from behind the booth — and there is no place they’d rather be.
“There’s no better feeling than when the headliner comes on; our work is essentially done for the night,” Miller said. “We stand on the stage and see everybody’s smiling faces. That is what we do it for.”
