Harwich Music Festival: May 2010

Monday, May 17, 2010

Cafe Rhizophere

Subject: Cafe Rhizophere Harwich Music Festival Winter Home(s)!

Harwich is fast becoming known as the restaurant center of the mid-cape with excellent inns and new younger hip restaurants, like the Harwich Land Ho Hot Stove, and Embers Flat Pizza. We also believe that the Harwich Cranberry Festival Committee wanting to open and explore going into a new direction towards "more cultural, less carnival" and is the why the Harwich Musical Festival Committee was formed in the fall of 2009.

Cafe * Rhizosphere

We need to have a movable or rotational coffee house in winter home(s) for "open mic" days or nights, which offer a more serene and serious atmosphere for poetry, and folk music and with audience and artist within an environment of non-alcohol intimacy and concentration.

First Congregational Church Parish Hall, in Harwich Center, and Pilgrim Congregational Church, and Christ Episcopal Church is Harwich Port, East Hawich Methodist Church are the many venues we will explore as to offer HMF as a place where our committee my work with , to see if they might offer us a winter home in doors, for music and fellowship. So who do YOU know in these communities?

In about two years time the Harwich town owned South Harwich Meeting House, may become our permanent home once the foundation and repair is completed.

http://www.facebook.com/l/98c93;www.southharwichmeetinghouse.com/

(*)The Rhizosphere is the zone surrounding the roots of plants in which complex relations exist among the plant, the soil microorganisms and the soil itself. The plant roots and the biofilm associated with them can profoundly, influence the chemistry of the soil including pH and nitrogen transformations.

We hoped that a new agenda of folks would be open to develop an outreach to musicians in Harwich, as sort of an new academy of music, where by we connect with talent development in Harwich and surrounding communities and offer steady guidance and networking for individual advancement in the performing arts, and music as well as marketing from our community.

HARWICH"S HOLLOW AWAKENS TO MUSIC THIS SPRING, SUMMER WINTER & FALL

by John J Bangert

On Earth Day 2010, famed Life magazine and Grammy award winning photographer, Rowland Scherman and I met for a lunch and a beer in Harwich Center, at Andale's Cafe, then we toured the "Harwich Hollow."

Click Here for your own virtual tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP_BLlnUzNk

Rowley snapped his camera as soon as his eye caught hold of the community tree, a large symbolic spreading cooper beach tree, growing in town for perhaps 100 years or more at Brooks Park. Scherman shot Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, and the most of the folk acts and rock n roll music scene, a who's who from the 60s, 70s and 80's. Now- still not retired, Rowland has been on our committee since last year.

We thought that this tree, with hundreds of carved initials from lover's in the Harwich past, to today's young folks committed by fresh engravings today commemorating from the rites of spring -2010.

Harwich Folks Festival is a place for new beginnings, a place where locally grown talent like Catie Flynn,-The Fireman's Daughter, Annie Lynch - Annie and the Bee Keepers, Emma Dubner - The Ticks, The Elbows, JO & CO, to name just a few groups and the well established folks from our Cape community like Harwich's own Greg Greenway and Kris Larsen; and from nearby towns like Carol Chichetto, Sarah Burrill, David Roth and Anne Hirst and others may network and connect or reconnect with each other and the general community. Historically in the 1960-1970's, we had Paul Pena from Queen Anne Road, who was not sighted, but gifted to see beyond Harwich and who developed his musical abilities with his parents Virginia & Jack Pena. Let us all be cognizant of today's talents and the prophets for tomorrow amongst us.

Also remembering the folks musicians from yesterday like the Harwich born, the late Paul Pena!

http://harwichfolks.blogspot.com/2009/10/who-was-harwichs-own-paul-pena.html

Our next meeting is Thursday, May 20th Albro House Main St. next to town Hall at 6:30 PM!

Our Harwich Music Festival committee will integrate the arts, and crafts festival dates to now include music, as an added value to growing list of events planned in town.

· Sat July 10, Sun July 11 (At Brooks Park)

· Sat Aug 14, Sun Aug 15 (At Brooks Park)

· Sat Sep 11, Family Fun Day -, Music at Bond Fire & Crafts Show (Red River Beach)

· Sat Sep 18, Arts, Crafts and Food with children’s music, puppets, face painting, programming in gazebo (At Brooks Park)

· Sat WOMR/ WFMR “Kick Off” Celebration and Music Festival in the (At Brooks Park & Harwich Hollow) 12-8pm

· Sun Children’s program on big WOMR/WFMR stage if still available in AM before parade,

and Harwich Folks Festival after parade ‘til 5pm (At Brooks Park & Harwich Hollow)

http://harwichfolks/blogspot.com

WOMR / WFMR UPDATE

Plans continue for getting the new transmitter in Brewster by the SBA tower, and for installing two antennas on the tower to broadcast our signal down the rest of the Cape. The site will broadcast our regular WOMR programming, but will do so under the call letters, WFMR (further most radio), we like to say; in contrast to the outer most radio of our P-town call letters), at 91.3 on your FM dial.

We still are optimistically seeking a begin broadcasting date of early summer. A kickoff party for the repeater is in the works, for September 18th, in Harwich, in which we debut our new logo for WOMR/WFMR, http://www.facebook.com/l/98c93;92.1/91.3FM, and celebrating our programming to the Upper Cape. It will be a full day of fun and music, food and drink.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Selectman Seeks Sylvan Setting For New Music Festival

by Alan Pollock

HARWICH — As part of an effort to get the event back to its hometown roots—and back to nature—this year's Harwich Cranberry Festival will include a new Harwich Music Festival to be held in the natural amphitheater in the woods behind Brooks Park.

“I was driving by and one day I looked down there,” Selectman Ed McManus said. To discourage littering and other problems, the highway department had cleared away the thick brush from the area, revealing the natural bowl-shaped clearing just east of Brooks Park. McManus, the president of the cranberry festival committee, had been working with other volunteers to find a way to introduce a homegrown musical component to the event. Before long, the pieces started to come together.
John Bangert (left) and Ed McManus stand under the giant copper beech tree that guards the entry to the natural amphitheater. ALAN POLLOCK PHOTO

McManus was approached by Bob Weiser, a radio host and event producer with the Provincetown-based public radio station WOMR-FM, who was looking for a venue for a musical event. Weiser, a Harwich resident, said WOMR was looking for an event to coincide with the station's launch of a satellite transmitter in Brewster, which will help expand its market to the rest of Cape Cod. McManus suggested the Brooks Park site, and they gave it a careful look.

What they found was a natural performance space with great acoustics, close to parking lots, rest rooms, the bike trail and a playground. The two met with the recreation and youth commission, which has jurisdiction over the site, and police and fire officials. There are several obstacles to using the site for a public performance space, “nothing insurmountable,” McManus said, but a sizeable electrical service will need to be brought in, and some provision will need to be made for handicap access. Public safety officials and the rec and youth commission have given preliminary approval, McManus said.

WOMR will pay to erect a stage and a dance floor for its free concert on Sept. 18, and will make the stage available for the new Harwich Music Festival on the following day. Thanks to WOMR, “We're not using any taxpayer money,” co-organizer John Bangert said. During its event, the radio station will raise money from the proceeds of a beer and wine bar, which will have professional bartenders and a fenced-in area where the alcohol will be consumed.

The radio station's event will be an excellent test of the amphitheater's suitability for crowds, McManus said. “We can get a sense of how it works,” he noted. If the test is successful, the town can consider making more permanent improvements, like installing a wheelchair ramp, but not much else, Bangert said.

“We want to keep it natural, not overdeveloped,” he said. The natural space is guarded by a giant copper beech tree, whose trunk bears generations of initials from young adventurers and lovers. It's a fitting centerpiece of the music festival, McManus said.

“It's got its roots in the community,” he said.

In the short term, a vehicle will be used to provide wheelchair access to the amphitheater, and people will be encouraged to bring beach blankets or lawn chairs for seating. The festival committee will also need to obtain the necessary permits for food and beverages to be served there.

It's a logical step to begin migrating festival activities to Brooks Park, away from the high school site, McManus said. The town is likely to be building a replacement high school in the years ahead, probably utilizing much of the existing front lawn, where the craft fair is usually held.

“It makes sense to build the future of the festival around here,” he said.

The new natural performance space is in keeping with the back-to-basics thrust of this year's cranberry festival, Bangert said. “It's about more culture, less carnival,” he said. The professional craft show, which drew dozens of crafters and merchants from a wide geographic area, will be replaced by a show with more local artists and craftsmen.

“Our goal is to take the 'starving' out of 'starving artists,'” Bangert said. A strong core of local artists has already emerged, including Paul Lagg, who designed an impressive logo for the event. Lagg's full-time job is as the GIS coordinator for the town of Chatham.

Even the food concessions will be encouraged to find and use local produce in their offerings, Bangert said. Likewise, the music festival will feature home-grown performers like Paul Pena, Greg Greenway, Carol Chichetto, Sarah Burrill, Kris Larson and David Roth. The event will also feature The Fireman's Daughter, a Nashville-based folk duo co-starring Catie Flynn of Harwich; Annie Lynch of Annie and the Beekeepers, Emma Dubner of the Ticks, The Elbows, JO & CO and other groups. It's an opportunity for popular, established performers, as well as up-and-coming local acts, Bangert said.

Details on the Harwich Cranberry Festival's plans will be firmed up over the summer, and information will be posted at www.harwichcranberryfestival.org.