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.
The Manitou Music Festival presents exciting and diverse concerts featuring national and regional performers in idyllic outdoor & family friendly locations. The Festival has been a summer tradition in Glen Arbor since the mid 1990s. “Jack Conners the producer of concerts at the charming Studio Stage is continuing the tradition of a rich mix of musical genres including Celtic, Americana, Indie Folk, Jazz, Bluegrass and Alternative Rock,” said Glen Arbor Art Association director Peg McCarty. “It promises to be one of the most memorable musical line-ups that we have ever had.” The Festival volunteer committee has also booked exciting musicians for the Dune Climb and The Homestead venues.
The perennially popular Northport Community Band, conducted by Don Wilcox, will perform patriotic favorites on Friday, July 3 at 7 p.m. on the Old Schoolhouse lawn in Glen Arbor. The concert kicks off this year’s Manitou Music Festival.
The Glen Arbor Art Association invites artists to submit original paintings for the annual Manitou Music Festival poster competition. Deadline for the 2015 poster competition is September 15. The limited edition posters are hugely popular and sold through the art association and selected shops and art galleries in Leelanau County. Competition is open to anyone who is a current member of the Glen Arbor Art Association. Subject matter must be appropriate to the Manitou Music Festival. That is, work that represents recognizable area scenes. All artwork must be original and previously unpublished. There is no entry fee. Detailed guidelines and a submission form are available at GlenArborArt.org.
The Manitou Music Festival’s annual choral event highlights the Summer Singers, an all volunteer group of more than 50 singers from around Leelanau county. The concert, directed by Empire resident Dana Allen, will perform traditional classics like American Folk Rhapsody and Ching a Ring Chaw and favorites like It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Swing by Duke Ellington and the ballad O My Luve’s Like a Red, Red Rose with cello and oboe.
The setting overlooking Lake Michigan at The Homestead’s Bay Mountain is spectacular and the chair lift ride up is invigorating, but the star of the show is Ronald Radford, American master of the Flamenco guitar who will perform on Thursday, July 24 at 7 p.m.
The Manitou Music Festival is pleased to welcome back Mulebone on Sunday, July 20 at the Lake Street Studio Stage in Glen Arbor. 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. Hugh and John play slide guitar boogies, up-tempo rags, and country blues of all shapes and colors. Sometimes they play close to the source, as if tracing the image, and at other moments they take a new look, as if understanding their home from a distant land.
The 16th annual Dune Climb concert will take place Sunday, July 13 at 7 p.m. Imagine a beautiful summer’s evening at the foot of the Dune Climb in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, hundreds of families enjoying their pre-concert picnics and then a musical program provided by artists of national stature. This is the magical mixture which has filled audiences with warm memories every year since the first Dune Climb concert in 1998. The setting is magnificent and the music is even better. The concert at the Dune Climb is presented annually by the Glen Arbor Art Association and is free to the public. Because of the unique venue and incomparable music it routinely draws an audience of several thousand.
The Glen Arbor Art Association’s Manitou Music Festival has a new director this summer. The successor to Harry Fried is Jack Conners, who has enjoyed a long career in the recording industry, and is no stranger to this popular local festival. This year’s Manitou Music Festival kicks off with patriotic music by the Northport Community Band on July 3 and crescendos with the annual Dune Climb concert on July 13. We spoke to Conners about his new role, and about this year’s lineup.
Eneliko “Liko” Smith, the enigmatic Samoan-born boxer turned hotelier who has made two ill-fated bouts for Sugar Loaf, has shifted gears and will instead acquire the Glen Arbor Art Association’s Manitou Music Festival — the popular classical and folk music concert series that takes place in the summertime at area churches, at the backyard studio stage at Lake Street Studios, and at the Sleeping Bear Dune Climb. Ann Arbor teacher and performer Harry Fried had run the Festival until stepping down last year. The Manitou Music Festival was founded about 20 years ago by world-renowned cellist Crispin Campbell, who has since gone on to found symphony orchestras in the Columbian jungle in land formerly occupied by leftist FARC-rebels.