Four Corners Folk Festival receives significant award for 2008 event from the Colorado Council on the Arts
The Four Corners Folk Festival has been awarded a matching grant of $13,650 from the Colorado Council on the Arts, a state agency. This grant was awarded through the CCA’s 2008-2009 Grants to Artists and Organizations Program and it will support artist’s fees at the 2008 Four Corners Folk Festival.
State grants are awarded through a competitive process. This grant signifies that FolkWest provides a high level of quality in its programs, community service and administrative ability. The Four Corners Folk Festival has transformed Labor Day in Pagosa Springs from a low visitor weekend to one of the busiest times of the year, demonstrating that cultural tourism is an important component of a tourist-based economy.
The Colorado Council on the Arts is funded through an annual appropriation from the Colorado General Assembly and federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. Information about the 2006 Four Corners Folk Festival is available by calling 877-472-4672 or online at www.folkwest.com.
Earl Scruggs on stage at Bean Blossom in June of 2008. Photo by Thomas Stout.
Earl Scruggs set the audience on fire last month with his brief, surprise performance at the Bill Monroe Memorial Bluegrass Festival in Bean Blossom, Ind. With no advance announcement, Scruggs appeared on stage with Lizzy Long & Friends, joining in some harmony singing, offering a few background licks on a vocal number and wowing the crowd with his banjo anthem, “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”
It’s obvious that Scruggs, at age 84, hasn’t eased into the rocking chair.
An exclamation point to Scruggs’ non-retired status came earlier this week when the pioneering bluegrasser dazzled his audience on the final night of the Seattle, Wash., Symphony Orchestra’s SummerFest series. Scruggs’ appearance on the series playbill comes as no surprise once you realize who organized the concerts — Seattle native and ace fiddler/violinist Mark O’Connor.
Scruggs’ Seattle’s appearance, it should be noted, proves that milestones can happen, no matter a person’s age. Scruggs and his band had a more-than-adequate warm-up act, the Sparrow Quartet, one of virtuoso banjo player Bela Fleck’s many side projects. It marked the first time Scruggs and Fleck had shared the stage — and share it they did, with an encore performance that also included O’Connor.
Writing for the Seattle Times, freelance critic Tom Keogh, described the banjo guru’s performance: “… Scruggs was the center of a bluegrass onslaught. He played some of his most famous material (’Sally Goodwin,’ ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’) and a number of covers, including the 19th-century folk song ‘In the Pines,’ the even older ‘Soldier’s Joy’ (’I wrote it,”‘Scruggs quipped) and the Beatles’ ‘Lady Madonna.’
“Scruggs’ flowing, three-finger syncopation gave every tune a ringing quality that was both open and epic. Yet he could sound lazy and swaying (on Bob Dylan’s ‘You Ain’t Going Nowhere’), slightly martial (’Soldier’s Joy’) or witty (’Doin’ My Time’). “Surrounded by the likes of 75-year-old, Grammy Award-winning fiddler Bobby Hicks and renowned multi-instrumentalist John Jorgenson, Scruggs took a couple of necessary rests and let his terrific band rip through a few favorites.”
Also appearing as band members were sons Gary and Randy Scruggs.
Scruggs, meanwhile, has other summer dates to perform. He’ll appear Aug. 17 at the Havelock County Jamboree in Havelock, Ontario, and Aug. 31 at the Four Corners Folk Festival in Pagosa Springs, Colo.
A complete list of his tour dates and lots of information you may not know about Earl Scruggs can be found at www.earlscruggs.com.
Folk Filigree: Four Corners Folk Festival proves music’s evolution a success
By Mike Clark (special to the Durango Herald)| September 6, 2005
While many of us weren't looking, folk music has gone through a metamorphosis.
Anyone, like me, who wandered away from folk music in the 1960s and came to the Four Corners Folk Festival on Reservoir Hill over Labor Day weekend expecting to hear a modern version of Pete Seeger or Joan Baez, was in for a surprise. The five or so hours we spent on Saturday may not have been representative of the entire three-day event, but there wasn't a lot of what I used to know as "folk" music.
The 10th annual event in Pagosa Springs was all acoustic to be sure, but beyond that the mix was as eclectic as one could imagine. There were covers of songs by Stevie Wonder and the Beatles, plus some straight-up jazz and Brazilian samba in addition to a generous helping of bluegrass. It took a little internal musical re-defining on my part, but boy, was it worth it.
Of the three bands we heard Saturday the most "folky" was Crooked Still, a Boston group featuring soaring lead vocalist Aoife O'Donovan and a reflective, syncopated performance built on improvisational cello riffs -- did I mention things had changed? -- from Rushad Eggleston.
Crooked Still was joined for its last number by Darol Anger, the virtuoso jazz-bluegrass violinist whose own band, The Republic of Strings, also appeared Saturday. The Republic, (including cellist Eggleston for this set), which is strictly an instrumental ensemble, moved the crowd with some accomplished acoustic jazz. The highlight of the set was a Brazilian-influenced number about a man with new shoes and sore feet, structured as a comic interplay between driving samba dance rhythm and interludes of atonal violin that made even my feet hurt.
Our Saturday highlight, though, was Old School Freight Train from Charlottesville, VA. This bunch of fresh-faced music majors and more experienced performers brought the crowed to a standing ovation with unique acoustic interpretations of pop music. They played "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder and straight-up bluegrass that would have done Bill Monroe proud.
OSFT's most affecting song was its version of Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927." Given the tragedy in the Delta, Newman's haunting lyric, "Some people got lost in the flood, some got away all right...", and the poignant refrain, "They tryin' to wash us away..." left a few damp eyes in the crowd.
But while the music may have been new, the crowd and the festival atmosphere were familiar from the hazy, distant past. There were holdovers and throwbacks to the '60s all over the place, in tie-dye and long skirts and knitted caps, passing in front of row upon row of porta-johns. The 120-acre site was covered with upward of 3,500 festival goers, more middle-aged than any other single group, all having a great time and basking in the laid-back atmosphere.
The only new wrinkle was kids... everywhere. If it wasn't their own kids, it was their grandkids, and the festival created activities for them as well. One workshop even featured Pagosa's hometown bluegrass group The Hot Strings patiently leading a group of 7- to 10-year-old pickers in a bluegrass music lesson.
And as for music in general, who's to say what's folk and what's not, and when the music is as good as it was on Saturday, who really cares? The Four Corners Folk Festival features a quote on its web site from Louis Armstrong: "All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song." Point taken.
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Touring Colorado Arts By Elaine Mariner |
DenverPost.com | October 16, 2005
The arts can be an easy political target. Although they inspire and enrich, the arts also have the inherent ability to challenge and provoke. But what's been lost in such controversies (including recent criticism of the Colorado Council on the Arts by some campaigners) is how the state's very modest investment in arts and culture is making a significant educational and economic difference in communities across the state.
Let me share this impact by telling you how I spent my Labor Day weekend while visiting four grant winners in southern Colorado. In my travels, I encountered impressive achievements, but also saw vast unmet potential.
My first stop was Trinidad, where I participated in a community assessment led by the state Office of Economic Development. Trinidad is both blessed and burdened with the legacy of having once been an important trading stop on the old Santa Fe Trail - blessed because the downtown is a stunning collection of historic architecture; burdened because these large and ornate buildings are costly to preserve and maintain.
In a tin-ceilinged former department store - unheated, not air-conditioned and unattended for several months each year - sits a $2.5 million collection of Western paintings, the A.R. Mitchell Museum. It's an appropriate role for a state arts agency to help ensure that cultural treasures like the Mitchell are accessible and secure. Unfortunately, the council isn't currently able to provide support, but the Mitchell's staff of one is working very hard to raise local contributions to open the doors year-round and to ensure the valuable collection is safe from the risks of environmental damage and theft.
The council has been able, however, to provide $14,300 to the Trinidad Area Arts Council for arts learning programs that serve 1,500 students and employ several artists. This past summer, 20 talented youths received scholarships to work with a professional artist for 12 weeks, culminating with a community art show and sale. Eighth-grader Shantel Hurtado pocketed $90 when she sold one piece and was commissioned by eager customers to create two more. The people of Colorado didn't just help create art in Trinidad - we helped create an artist and an entrepreneur.
My next stop was Creede. This former mining town of 400 in Mineral County lies next to the Rio Grande and is a staging area for backcountry hikers and fly fishermen. But it's also theater country. Professional actors from all over the United States audition to perform with the Creede Repertory Theatre, another council grantee, for a four-month season of Broadway hits and original shows.
I saw "Slabtown," a premiere by Denver writer Steven Cole Hughes that captures life in Leadville right before the silver rush. To see a world-class play about a small Colorado mining town in a small Colorado mining town was just too perfect.
Equally exciting, I learned that the theater's economic contribution to Creede - not just jobs and ticket sales, but the value of food, lodging and goods sold to actors and audience members - comes to $2.1 million, or 26 cents of every dollar that changes hands all summer long. Talk about an economic generator!
Destination No. 3 was Silverton, home to an entirely different but equally wonderful kind of theater. If Creede Repertory is polished and professional, A Theatre Group is devoutly amateur. Everybody I met had been in a production, including two town board members and a sporting goods store owner whose family has been summering there for 47 years. A Theatre Group is the best example of how the arts build community by bringing people together.
My final stop was Pagosa Springs, where I was wowed by the energy of 4,000 fans dancing on Reservoir Hill at the Four Corners Folk Festival. Festival co-founder Dan Appenzeller said the $260,000 event - with its $1.6 million impact on the city - couldn't happen without the council's $12,000 grant as seed funding. A ticket costs $95, and that includes three full days of performances by nationally known musicians, camping for two nights, free kids' entertainment and free master classes.
Are you getting the picture? Artists and art administrators are blending earned revenues, donor support and modest grants from the Colorado Council on the Arts into significant economic and educational contributions. The council has been ridiculed recently for supporting projects that some found frivolous, but I see nothing frivolous about the jobs, student achievement and community engagement we support. And because our grants must be matched with local funds, these public dollars, shared judiciously with well- managed nonprofit organizations and cities, sprout many more dollars for communities. In fact, last year our grants generated 10 times their value in local support.
Here comes the part you knew I was getting to: the state of Colorado can and should do so much more. I don't advocate a European-style central arts ministry that dictates cultural tastes. But we should expand our successful model of helping communities help themselves by making more grants for more local cultural programs and events. In fiscal 2006 the council is getting $700,000 from the legislature.
That's better than our all-time low of $200,000 in 2004, but still at the bottom as compared to other states. The national average for state arts spending is about $1 per capita. For Colorado that would amount to around $4.5 million, still just .075 percent of the total state general fund expenditures. At that level, instead of investing in just a portion of the communities as we do now, we'd be able to help every community in the state. Perhaps more important, we'd be competitive with diverse states like Montana, Maine, Iowa, and Florida, all of which are taking steps to treat the arts as an economic development strategy.
The council recently adopted a new slogan: "The Arts: Everywhere You Look." These words don't quite describe Colorado's present. I hope they describe our future.
