Manitou Music Festival Kicks Off With Stars and Stripes

From staff reports

On Friday, July 3, the Northport Community Band will perform at 7 p.m. outdoors at the Glen Arbor Athletic Club. This free concert is the first concert of the Glen Arbor Art Association’s 2009 Manitou Music Festival and will feature patriotic music.

The Northport Community Band has existed for many years and originally served primarily as a band performing at Independence Day celebrations at Marina Park in Northport. The popularity of the band continues to increase as they perform throughout the region. The band members and the conductor are all volunteers whose work is a “labor of love.”

The new director of the Band is Don Wilcox who retired in 2005 as director of bands from West Virginia University after guiding the University’s band program for 34 years. Wilcox is a 1958 graduate of the University of Michigan. In a teaching and conducting career spanning half a century, Don Wilcox has worked with musicians of all ages and abilities, conducting bands from one-room schools in rural Appalachia to several of the major concert halls in the world, and in all 50 states and 21 foreign countries. He has served as guest conductor or visiting lecturer at more than 70 universities in the United States, Europe, Japan, Thailand and China, and in “retirement” maintains an active international schedule as a clinician and conductor.

The July 3 concert in Glen Arbor will feature a fast-paced variety of patriotic, Dixieland, and period music. Bring a lawn chair, blanket and your red, white and blue for celebrating our nation’s independence through music at this free concert.

Mulebone, July 8

The Manitou Music Festival will continue its 19th season with a performance by the blues duo Mulebone on Wednesday, July 8 at 8 p.m. at the Studio Stage, located at Lake Street Studios in Glen Arbor. The rain location is the Glen Arbor Town Hall.

Mulebone is a partnership comprised of multi-instrumentalist John Ragusa and roots music specialist Hugh Pool. The launching pad for their musical expression is traditional blues. Together they have recorded a CD, which spent 15 weeks in the Top 100 Albums in America. Along with playing live and TV appearances, they won blues artist of the year at radio stations from Seattle, Washington to Red Bank, New Jersey.

Together in Mulebone, Hugh and John play slide guitar boogies, 1-chord trance riffs a la Howlin Wolf, up-tempo rags of Reverend Gary Davis and country blues of all shapes and colors. Sometimes they play close to the source, almost as if tracing the image, and at other moments, they re-examine the source, float above it to take a new look as if seeing one’s home from a distant land.

John Ragusa plays conch shell, Jews harp, cornet, all manner of flutes, tin whistle, and chimes in on the harmony vocals. He is a member of Beth Nielson Chapman’s group as well as his own John Ragusa outfit, and plays regularly in conjunction with Deepak Chopra’s speaking engagements. Amongst dozens of studio credits are contemporary jazz greats: Joe Taylor, Jeremy Wall and world music icon Tom Ze. Hugh says, “One time we were in Lexington, Ky. sitting at an outdoor cafe and John played me a bunch of melodies sliding a straw up and down in a cup of ice water” … you get the drift.

Hugh Pool plays guitars, harmonica, boot board and sings, all with a mouth full of whiskey and a giant heart. He has played his brand of blues in clubs and at festivals from Jakarta, Indonesia to North Cape, Norway; From Vienna, Austria to Ottawa, Ontario and has been critically lauded by the New York Times, New York Press, the Village Voice, Pittsburgh Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Blues Revue Magazine … the list goes on. He is also a noted producer who has worked on hundreds of records at his Williamsburg, Brooklyn studio, Excello, working with musicians such as: Taj Mahal, Debbie Harry and Marah, to name a few.

Blue Origami, July 15

On Wednesday, July 15 at 8 p.m. the jazz/blues/world trio Blue Origami will perform outdoors at the Studio Stage.

Andrew Bishop’s Blue Origami is a 21st Century global jazz and blues project that finds an intersection of Eastern and Western influenced musics under the umbrella of a classic B3 Organ Trio (Saxophone, Hammond B3 Organ, and Drums). The group includes Andrew Bishop on reeds, Duncan Mcmillan on Hammond B3 Organ, and Alex Trajano on Drums.

Multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bishop is a composer and improviser in highly diversified musical idioms. As a composer he has received over 20 commissions from professional organizations and universities, numerous residencies, and recognition and awards from ASCAP, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Andrew W. Melon Foundation, and a nomination from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He leads a variety of his own ensembles and his two recordings as a leader Time and Imaginary Time and the Hank Williams Project (both on Envoi Recordings) received high praise from the New York, Times, Downbeat, All About Jazz, among others. He has performed with Karl Berger, Sandip Burman, Kenny Burrell, Eugene Chadbourne, Ray Charles, Gerald Cleaver, Drew Gress, Jerry Hahn, Chris Lightcap, Mat Maneri, Tony Malaby, Hank Roberts, Jacob Sacks, Craig Taborn, Clark Terry, Matt Wilson and John Zorn, among others.

All Tickets cost $15 (Children 18 and under are FREE, except for the July 30 Benefit Concert). Tickets may be purchased at the concert venues, or by calling the Glen Arbor Art Association (231) 334-6112 or Lake Street Studios (231) 334-3179. For more information, please visit www.manitoumusicfestival.com.