Seldovia Summer Solstice Music Festival

As Director of the Seldovia Summer Solstice Music Festival and Chairman of the Seldovia Arts Council, I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the participants, sponsors, and dedicated producers of this year’s festival. It featured outstanding, fresh and inspiring talent utilizing an Americana theme which was aptly suited to an election year, as we all ponder the directions we take for future generations.

Headliner Joe Craven’s zany ,”out of the box” style of instrumentation, spoken word and humor illustrated his repeated message that the arts are crucial to the development of the creative and innovative thinking which is essential to good decision-making in all walks of life and should be embraced by each of us as a skill that we each possess and have the right to develop and express.

Headliners, Ralston Bowles and his sideman, Captain Midnight, added to the spirit of thoughtfulness with poignant songs about friendship, the fragile nature of life itself and the way that we treat our children and each other. Humorous dialogue and quick rapport between the headliners was refreshing.

Also refreshing were the many young people and new faces to the business of performance: Faolan, SeekBob, Sarahndipity and the Seldovia Fiddlers all featured youthful performers, while Seafarin’ Strangers, Rob Rurka’s Band, the Mamma Tonga Band, Love Life Music, Billy Goat, and Relatively Famous all featured family members. Wes Weddell, Esther Golton, Marion Walsh, Tom Begich and the Dan MAC Band traveled long distances to enjoy the fun and share their musical adventures.

It was truly a great weekend of music and workshops taking place all over town, including jamming on board the “Tusty”, at Susan B. English School, at the Tide Pool Cafe and other great spots.

I would especially like to thank those Seldovia folks who housed artists, provided food for them, donated T-Shirts, gave in the form of sponsorship and physically helped stage the show. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank the dedicated members of the Seldovia Arts Council who work all year to make these days a success.

Did you enjoy this year’s festival? Tell us about it in the comments.

(edited 7/3 to add photo of full volunteer list)

You can see all of the photos from this year’s festival in our Festival 2008 Photo Album.

Do you have photos you’ve taken of the festival and posted online? Tag them with “seldoviamusicfestival” and drop a link to them in the comments to this post. Share the fun!

Local papers and the efforts of the festival’s publicity chair, Susan Zerwick, are getting the word out about the festival. Read about us in the Homer Tribune, Longest day brings music to Seldovia, and the Homer News, Seldovia sings with summer music festival.

Updated to add: KBBI has also archived this sound file in their news archives:

06/19/08    12:52p - The small Kachemak Bay community of Seldovia will play host to a wide range of musicians for the annual Seldovia Summer Solstice Music Festival which begins Friday night and runs through Saturday night.      KBBI’s Mike Mason
Listen to this story

Want to download your own copy of the program pamphlet that we hand out at the festival? Now you can. It’s a 187 kb .pdf file and if the order of the pages looks odd, it’s because it’s meant to be printed out and folded into a booklet. The festival schedule insert page is a separate file, also a pdf.

If you don’t need a printed copy, remember that all of the program information is on the Program and Supporters pages of this website as well.

The latest copy of the festival press release is now available for download (345kb pdf).

It’s time to start setting up the school Commons for the festival. Setup help is needed. If you don’t get a call from one of the setup leads but have time to lend a hand, please contact director@seldoviamusicfestival.org.

The stage is already up, but Tobben Spurkland is in charge of moving and setting up the infamous canvas backdrop flats. If you can help out or if you helped out in the past couple years and remember how they went together (yeah, sorry about not recording that better), please contact him.

Stage decorating and setting up of chairs and the gates will be at 10 am on Monday, June 9. This is another time when more willing hands make some tedious work opening and lining up all those metal folding chairs a lot lighter. No need to sign up: just join us at the main school door on Monday.

Festival Director Susan Mumma is hard at work on the workshop schedule. We’ve posted a preliminary version on the Program page, but it’s likely that there may still be some changes: we have a few more workshop topics to squeeze in and we may juggle the room assignments around a bit yet. But this gives you an idea of some of the great things in store for you on the festival Saturday afternoon.

Remember: workshop admission is included in the full festival pass, or you can pay for just a single workshop at a time. For more information, check the Tickets page.

This month the regular Arts Council meeting will be held early and devoted entirely to working on this year’s festival.

The meeting will be held Monday at 7 pm in the Seldovia Public Library.

This meeting isn’t just for members. Anyone who can lend a hand with the festival or who can contribute to its staging is very much welcome. Please join us.

Now you can download and print out a copy of our 2008 festival poster (pdf).

In fact, while you’re at it, why don’t you print out two and hang one of them up someplace to help us publicize the festival? Every little bit helps, you know.

Thanks for hanging in with us while we have been moving hither and yon about the internet. This is our new and, we hope, permanent location at an easy-to-remember address.

We’ve moved all of the content over from our most recent temporary site, so feel free to look around through the menu items above or the topics listed under the “More” header in the sidebar to the left. We haven’t updated the links to our site in the posts earlier than this one, but will simply go forward and wing it through the confusion.

Don’t forget to bookmark our site right now, while you’re thinking of it, so you can check back regularly for updates. Or, if you’d prefer, check out our section on how to subscribe to our updates by RSS feed or email.

Happy reading! We’re looking forward to seeing you at the festival.