D’Addario and Co., the world’s largest manufacturer of musical instrument accessories, has penned an exclusive arrangement with the Emergenza festival, the world’s independent organizer of unsigned bands throughout the world, to sponsor of Emergenza's International Festival. These festivals take place in 180 cities in 20 countries with more than 10,000 participating bands. D''Addario and Co., which includes such prestigious brands as D’Addario strings, Evans Drumheads, Planet Waves cables, straps, tuners and accessories, has agreed to work with Emergenza to promote and sample its products among the 10,000 up and coming artists participating in the festival. In addition, D''Addario will provide Emergenza''s staff with hands on product training, support for Emergenza''s retail partners, general marketing support through printed materials, web outreach and press. "Our partnership with Emergenza complements our support and development of up and coming artists from around the world", says John Roderick, D''Addario''s Vice President of Product Management. "D''Addario''s strong artist relations and education programs matched with Emergenz''a outreach to bands and retailers worldwide reinforces our commitment to bringing music to all while supporting those that make music their life and livelihood". The Emergenza International Music festival is the largest organized event for unsigned bands in the world. Standing at number two in the world rankings for the number of gigs produced in a network of 500 clubs in 20 countries Emergenza is by far the top supporter of up and coming artists. More than one million people go to Emergenza concerts every season to watch bands that are given the opportunity and the support to play on a professionally-equipped stage. D’Addario & Company, Inc. designs, manufactures, and markets complete lines of strings for fretted and bowed musical instruments, drumheads, drum practice pads, and guitar and woodwind accessories under the proprietary brand names D’Addario, Evans Drumheads, Planet Waves, Rico, and HQ Percussion. The company also runs the popular Gbase.com online gear source. D’Addario products are marketed in approximately 120 countries.