This year the Beethoven and Banjos music festival musically celebrates the watersheds of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the Earth with a program that combines classical, folk, and indigenous music and dance. Musicians from Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Mississippi River, Lake Champlain, and Atlantic Ocean watersheds will come together for this one of a kind collaboration.  Concerts are presented this year in collaboration with Woodland Sky Native American Dance Company and Aeolus Quartet.  Woodland Sky consists of Native American dancers from the Ojibwe, Sioux, Potawatomi and Apache tribes. This award winning group portrays all styles of dancing in this region which include traditional, fancy, jingle, grass and hoop. The Aeolus Quartet was formed in 2008 with a vision to share the permanent power of the string quartet repertoire with wide-ranging audiences. Based in New York City, the Quartet brings an equal dedication to all of its artistic endeavors, placing new and lesser known works side-by-side with the time honored masterworks.  The festival also welcomes back soprano Mary Bonhag, multi-instrumentalist Laurel Premo and artistic director and bassist Evan Premo.  The music will include compositions and arrangements by Evan and Laurel Premo as well as traditional Native American song with dance interpretations by Woodland Sky.

Programs will be presented in Marquette, Crystal Falls and Houghton.  On Thursday, August 27 at 7:00 p.m. ET, bring your chairs for an outdoor concert held at the Elwood Mattson Lower Harbor Park in Marquette.  On Saturday, August 28, at 7:00 pm CT, the group will perform at the Crystal Theatre in Crystal Falls, and on Sunday, August 29 at 2:00 pm ET the concert will be held at the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts on Michigan Tech campus in Houghton.   The Rozsa Center performance will also be live streamed and available for viewing on the Rozsa Center and Beethoven and Banjos facebook pages.

Beethoven and Banjos music festival is sponsored by Northwoods Music Collaborative with generous donations from Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Midwest, Marquette West Rotary, Superior Watershed Partnership, Community Foundation of Marquette, and many generous individuals and businesses.   Because of this, we can offer our events to our communities as “come as you are, pay what you can”.   For more information and details about this festival please visit:  www.beethovenandbanjos.org  or the Beethoven and Banjos facebook page.

There are no advance tickets for this event.  Masks will be required.

This engagement is supported by the
Arts Midwest GIG Fund, a program of
Arts Midwest that is funded by the National
Endowment for the Arts, with additional
contributions from Michigan Council for Arts & Cultural Affairs.