Street Festival '19 / Kenwood Players

The Kenwood Players did two sets at the Street Festival. Here's a shot of the whole group, from left to right, Joe T, Steve, Gary, Dick, Joe B, Maggie, Michael, and me. Gary on drums is new to the area, and Joe B on bass has been around for decades playing in all sorts of groups.

Dick on trumpet and his wife Maggie on clarinet are the heart and soul of the group, doing all the organizational work, finding the music to play, and willing to drive great distances from visiting family in Northern Virginia to get to rehearsals.

Steve on trombone in the pic below, is a cousin, and his sound helped me immensely when I was learning the French horn. He can play brassy and "dirty" when it's called for, but he can also make a sound so sweet and full, you forget it's a brass instrument. Michael on the right is simply amazing on the sax. Whenever he launches into a solo, I automatically start grinning because of the good feeling he brings.

Here's a nice shot of Joe T who has recently been helping us on the keyboard

Here I am trying to keep up on banjo. Everyone else in the group is a seasoned pro, but I came to playing Dixieland very late. On the one hand it's the musical genre that seems the most universally successful in raising people's mood. On the other, it's quite difficult! I had never bothered with augmented and diminished chords before Dixieland, and all the chords come at an amazingly fast pace.

Here are Don and Pam (who helped with the pops and the drum groups) bringing a little Big Easy fashion sense to Main Street Orange while we were playing.

Street Festival '19 / Pops

We also had two Rapidan Pops performances at the street festival - one following the Fun Band under the tent and another at the end of the afternoon inside the Music Room. The Pops books contain things I've been working on going back to the '90s - tunes from Handel's Water Music that have just three or four voices. Since then I've added some early Americana put together for a performance over at Montpelier years ago, along with some movie and TV themes from the 60's and 70's.

The performance under the tent was limited to just ten players because that's all we could comfortably fit. Here's a pic of that group from behind me looking down towards the railroad tracks. You can see all the mics and the mixer I'd set up. The idea was to test using sound equipment to try making outdoor performance by strings feasible, and it worked pretty well

And here's a pic looking from the other direction

Heather, Lynn, Caroline, and Joe

Lynn, Caroline, Joe, and Barbara

Jenny, Pam, and Don

Barbara and Darlene

Hank and me

For the indoor performance (which was really just an open rehearsal) Benjamin conducted and we played exactly the same tunes as earlier, but with more musicians.

Here you can see Lynn, me, Heather, Barbara (with Caroline hidden), Steve, Hank and Joe

Jenny, Don, Pam, Charles, Lynn and me

Jenny, Pam, Brian, Benjamin

Madelyn, Caroline, Joe, and Barbara

Street Festival '19 / Fun Band

The town of Orange has a Street Festival the first Saturday every September and this year the Music Room had a number of associated activities. Some were under a tent outside in front of the building and others were inside. 

The first event was the Fun Band, which is a group we've had meeting for number of years. We're all retired, play various instruments in various other groups, and use books I've put together of mostly traditional, pop, and hymn tunes. Our most frequent performance venue is the local nursing home.

Here is the whole group

Bill plays both tuba and harmonica

Here's Mike on viola, Jenny on violin, Judy on ukulele, and Hank on guitar 

Here's Karla and Teresa on vocals, Joanna and Don on recorders. and Joe on cello

Here I am on guitar and singing

Here's a nice closeup of Teresa

and a nice closeup of Don

This family sat on the steps of the Music Room listening to our entire set, helped pass out songbooks, and insisted on making a donation to thank us for the music

And here is a pic of our most enthusiastic singalonger