Greetings and welcome to the 2007 Lancaster Festival, July 19-28, 2007. The 2007 Lancaster Festival marks the eighteenth year that I have been associated with the ambitious people of Fairfield County. After an audition with Maestro Gary Sheldon, Eleanor Hood and Barbara Hunzicker at a club appearance in March, 1989, Arnett Howard's Creole Funk Band was presented at that summer's festival on the Zane Bandstand. I have been performing at each Lancaster Festival in some kind of role ever since.
This year's Lancaster Festival begins Thursday, July 19th, 8 pm., with Splendor in the Brass, unfortunately, it's always the concert that I have to miss because of another concert commitment at Hilliard's Homestead Park. The Chicago Brass Quintet are wonderful players and nice people that I have known since 1996 when they helped me with excerpts from the Hummell and Hadyn Trumpet Concertos. This year six trumpeters get to play Bugler's Holiday, as well as the first movement of the Hadyn.
On Friday, July 20th, the Lancaster Festival starts the day at noon with the Ark Band, long time friends from the island of St. Lucia, who are seasoned reggae and calypso players. The Chicago Brass have an encore of their performance at the Elk's Lodge at 3:30 pm. that I just might be able to make. My friend Ursula Lanning (Lanning Gallery) coordinates this evening's 6 pm. ArtWalk and the theme is fiber art, featuring quilts and other material based works.
I have yet to meet pianist Jon Kimura Parker, but his face appears in promotions that I have seen for decades with Lancaster Festival and the Columbus Symphony. He is one of the special guests invited for the twentieth anniversary of the Lancaster Festival Orchestra and he has a late Friday evening concert at the First United Methodist Church.
Eleanor Hood's first Saturday specialty is called Festival Fair Day, held at the Fairfield County Fairgrounds, and the day packs children and family oriented activities into six busy hours. Included in that six hours are horses, mules, country musicians, Celtic consorters, racing pigeons, a petting zoo, home-cooked foods and my favorite entertainer and mime, Mark Abbati.
But the big to-do happens Saturday evenings when the good people of Lancaster (called by the envious, nickel millionaires), put on their summer evening clothes and drive out to the Ohio University-Lancaster Wendal Concert Stage, a massive tent covering that highlights a natural amphitheater. For twentieth consecutive summers, Maestro Sheldon has been directing an orchestra of sixty-five of the world's distinguished symphonic players to perform and premier high brow musics.
The dinner tables, for those of the means, are heaped with flowers, expensive cloths and settings, creatively eccentric centerpieces. Selected volunteers act as judges to ascertain which are prize winning tables in a number of categories and only after the prizes are awarded, do the meals and musical festivities begin.
The guest artists invited to join the 2007 Lancaster Festival Orchestra to perform their Twentieth Anniversary Concert are the before mentioned Chicago Brass Quintet and Jon Kimura Parker, as well as the Lancaster Chorale, Robert Post, Livingston Taylor (James' baby brother), Sara Sant' Ambrogio and...Arnett Howard. What an honor for me and the concert occurs on the fortieth anniversary of my beginnings as a professional musician in 1967. I think my mom and dad would be very proud.
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