SAUGERTIES, N.Y — Was the Hudson Project a festival or the rehearsal for a festival?

The Hudson Project, a three-day music event cut short on Sunday afternoon by thunderstorms, was the reopening of Winston Farm, the 800-acre site where Woodstock ’94 was held, for its first concert in 20 years. Saugerties borders Woodstock, and the farm was also intended as the site for the original Woodstock festival in 1969, before local opposition drove that festival to Bethel, N.Y.

The Hudson Project was a big production for a relatively small crowd. It booked more than 85 acts on five stages anticipated to run for at least 12 hours each day. Friday’s headliner was the Flaming Lips, a band that stages its neo-psychedelic anthems with photo-ready spectacle; its strobe lights were so overwhelming that one fan needed medical attention, and the set stopped until help arrived.

The rapper Kendrick Lamar was Saturday’s headliner, punching up the songs from his 2012 album, “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City,” with a live band that helped him deliver them like a barnstorming rocker. Sunday’s headliner, the dance-music producer Bassnectar, was unable to perform after the thunderstorms forced festival participants to evacuate the site at 4:45 p.m., and then to shut down as a second, larger storm moved in.

Where Woodstock ’94 drew at least 250,000 people to the wooded site, the Hudson Project called for just 20,000, many of them arriving Thursday to camp on the grounds — and some finding their cars stuck immovably in deep mud after the downpours, causing the American Red Cross to open an overnight shelter at an ice rink on Sunday night for stranded concertgoers, The Daily Freeman, a newspaper in Kingston, reported.