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As principal cellist of the Traverse City Philharmonic, Crispin Campbell plays to audiences ready for music by Brahms, Bach and Beethoven. That’s not what the audience will hear at the July 24 concert at The Homestead. Campbell and his cohorts, pianist Steve Stargardt and dobro player Joe Wilson, will be playing music familiar to fans of BB King, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Keith Jarrett, or down-home country music. Most of all with the improvisational flair and approach of jazz. Campbell says he started exploring improvisation around the year 2000. “I began creating my own music and teaching improvisation for string players,” he explains. “I’m really driven to not play the same way twice. That’s intriguing.”

This summer, the sounds of blues, bluegrass, pop, reggae, rock and jazz will once again fill the air at The Homestead. The popular Music on the Mountain series is returning for the first time since before the pandemic. The shows will take place at 7 p.m. on alternate Thursdays, beginning July 10 with the Luke Winslow-King duo. They will take place at the top of Bay Mountain, the resort’s ski hill. Patrons can ride the ski lift to the top. The backdrop, with the sun setting behind the sparkling waters of Sleeping Bear Bay, is like no other in the area.

The Sleeping Bear Dunes are alive in many ways — in folklore and legend, in plant and animal life, and, beginning in the late 1990s, with music. The first of many mid-July concerts staged at the Dune Climb took place on July 19, 1998. The idea was spawned by Crispin Campbell, cellist and Interlochen Arts Academy instructor since 1980.