PORT ANGELES — This is one of the planet’s warmest spots.
That’s the praise sung by a chorus of Canadians coming back to the Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts in Port Angeles this weekend.
“We get a really good vibe and buzz from playing the festival,” said Greg Madill, a member of the “full-contact folk” group the Ecclestons.
“We’ve been shown some incredible hospitality in Port Angeles,” added Laurence Knight, bassist for the Celtic-bluegrass band Tiller’s Folly.
“For us, the festival is more than going to a show. It’s visiting good friends and playing music for them.”
About 60 acts
The Ecclestons and the Folly are among some 60 folk, blues, jazz, Latin and other world-class music acts playing between today and Monday on six stages, from the Vern Burton Community Center to the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center.
The festival is a music lover’s feeding frenzy, with more than 145 concerts.
You might call it Joy de Fuca: a once-a-year whirl of people and rhythms, longtime favorite acts – and new sounds.
Everybody’s going to discover something,” said festival director Anna Manildi.
“People are always moving around. It’s the opposite of a formal concert.
“Go in and listen to a few songs; if you love it, stay,” or if you’re more curious about some other performer, slip away.
The festival, celebrating its 16th birthday, is different this time around, for many reasons.
Halfway into the six-week closure of the Hood Canal Bridge — meaning a longer-than-normal trek for Seattle-area musicians — Manildi has assembled a raft of Canadians and is bringing them across the border like cross-pollinating butterflies.
She’s calling Sunday “Oh Canada Day,” having scheduled a lineup of British Columbians including guitar virtuoso Harry Manx, Tiller’s Folly, the Ecclestons, self-described “wild cellist” Corbin Keep and fiddle-step dancing duo Kalissa and Ivonne Hernandez.
At the same time, the festival doesn’t lack acts from Seattle and Tacoma.
The Andalibre flamenco dance troupe, the rock ‘n’ roll string ensemble The Senate, the Latin dance band Picoso and Leanne Trevalyan, a singer well-known for fronting the swamp-boogie band Junkyard Jane, are among the musicians taking the long way around to the North Olympic Peninsula.
“People need music and we need gigs. An extra hour’s drive isn’t going to stop us,” Trevalyan declared.
“Lesser people might be scared off,” by the shut-down bridge, “but not us.”
Performers who’ve been to Port Angeles before say they revel in the environment here – and they don’t mean the mountains and trails.
‘Artistic community’
“Port Angeles is a very artistic little community,” said Doug Towle, leader of De La Terra, based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
“In the metropolitan area, people can be, I hate to use the word, but stuck-up,” he said, adding he hasn’t seen that attitude at the Fuca festival.
De La Terra – “of the Earth” in Spanish — swirls together a global blend of jazz, rumba and flamenco guitar.
“What we try to do, more than anything, is be a good time,” Towle said. “Get up and dance; that’s what it’s all about.”
Another dancing opportunity comes Saturday night as Picoso, a salsa-saturated outfit, performs at the Elks Naval Lodge and at the main Vern Burton Center stage.
Local dance teachers Carol Hathaway and Jeff Stauffer are sponsoring Picoso, and Hathaway has issued a challenge to those with pedometers.
She wore a pedometer at the festival a few years ago and watched it count up 26 miles of dancing.
This year, Hathaway is inviting other would-be marathoners to meet her at the Elks Lodge Monday night, where she’ll pass out awards for the highest mileage.
Besides exercise, Fuca fans can expose their senses to exotic musical flavor combinations.
Manx, for one, mixes traditional Indian music with American blues on what fellow musicians call a “wicked guitar.”
Manx grew up in England, lived in India for 12 years and then moved to Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, in 2000.
At age 54, he pronounces himself a one-man cultural collision.
Yet another festival aim, Manildi said, is to bring people of all ages together around art and music.
At 4 p.m. Saturday, for instance, an intergenerational song-writing workshop for children and seniors will take place in the Family Fun Zone, and on Monday a song-writing class especially for older adults will start at 11 a.m. at the Port Angeles Community Playhouse. Judith-Kate Friedman, director of Songwriting Works in Port Townsend, will facilitate both.
A drumming circle will form outside the Peabody Street entrance at the community center at 1:15 p.m. Sunday and at 1 p.m. Monday.
Fuca is meant to be an affordable destination for families, be they local or traveling, Manildi said.
“For $14, you can sample more than 40 performances in a day. And you can come with a 10-year-old, and it’s still $14, because children 12 and under get in free,” she said. Feel free to flit together around the venues, sampling songs and styles.
“Take a chance” on music you’ve never heard before, Manildi said. “You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
