Newsletters
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Festival Artwork and Feature Films! An Anchorage Folk Festival Newsletter November 2024 |
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January 23 to February 2, 2025 ★ |
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ATTENTION! Time is running out: Mainstage performance applications close on November 1. Apply now! More information is available on the AFF website. |
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In This Issue
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Introducing the 2025 Festival’s Official Art! ![]() Lee Post , aka Post Marks, and the Board of the Anchorage Folk Festival present Sea Jam—this year’s artwork! Inspired by the natural world and music, this is the world in which we live, create, play, and share. We hope you enjoy this art—and please, share it widely with your friends and family! ![]() “My family and I have spent a lot of time around Alaska’s cold, rocky seashores. We’ve spent weekends beachcombing in Homer, walking around Point Woronzof while couples have windblown picnics and kids climb on rocks, watching otters frolicking near the docks of Seward, warming up at a midnight beach bonfire with new friends on Douglas Island, and enjoying old friends having a summer jam session in Hope. This year’s poster captures a little of the magic that can happen when a group of friends has time to relax by the sea and lose themselves in their music.” AFF Board President Johnse Ostman explains how Lee was approached as a candidate for producing this year’s festival art: “I reached out to Lee several years ago to gauge interest. He and his daughter had attended a few Folk Week coffee shop gigs we played. I had been at workshops Lee did at the museum and generally thought he and his art are fun, and he was local and recognized in the Anchorage community. Lee was interested, and we agreed that 2025 would be the year.” Board member Lucy Peckham adds: “Lee made us feel, as a board, like our suggestions during the process of creative development inspired him! He was so receptive…and, in the end, his art inspires us. It is hopeful and visionary.” |
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A Double Feature—Two Movies for the Price of One!—on November 17 at the Wendy! Anchorage Folk Festival presents a Double-Feature Fall Film Festival in our home venue, the Wendy Williamson Auditorium at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. This event will support the main event, our two-week festival in January! The films are both documentaries about music, culture, and history. It begins with Roots of Fire at 6pm and continues (after a 20-minute intermission) at 7:45pm with The 78 Project Movie . Watch closely, and you’ll see one of our 2025 guest artists in both films! Admission is $15 for the double feature and $7.50 (half price!) with any valid student ID (UAA or ASD). Tickets are available for purchase at MyAlaskaTix.com. Read on for more film details and links to trailers and websites. We are deeply grateful to the producers of these two films for allowing us to show them!
When Abby Berendt Lavoi and husband Jeremey Lavoi started their Roots of Fire project, and more specifically what would become this feature-length documentary, they say, “we were incredibly interested in ethnicity in the world of Louisiana French music, particularly the areas where Cajun and Zydeco music blend, diverge, and how racial history in Louisiana influenced that. We also had a lot of interest in how Native Americans influenced Louisiana French music.”
Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. Learn more about the film at its official website: www.rootsoffire.com/aboutthedoc ![]() Inspired by the field recordings of Alan Lomax, director/producer Alex Steyermark and producer/recordist Lavinia Jones Wright created The 78 Project, an ongoing documentary journey to record today’s musicians with yesterday’s technology. Using just one microphone, an authentic 1930s Presto direct-to-disc recorder, and a blank lacquer disc, the musicians are invited to cut a record anywhere they choose. The result is an artifact—a 78rpm record—and a new connection to our cultural legacy. 78 Project participant Rosanne Cash called the experience “time-travel.” Along the way, a kaleidoscope of technologists, historians and craftsmen from every facet of field recording—Grammy-winning producers, 78 collectors, curators from the Library of Congress and Smithsonian—provide insights and history. In Tennessee, Mississippi, California, and Louisiana, the folk singers, punk rockers, and Gospel and Cajun singers share their lives through intimate performances, and find in that adventure a new connection to our cultural legacy. The 78 Project Movie is a documentary of the project’s travels and recordings between August 2012 and September 2013 and has been called “part road movie, part concert film, and part journey through the past.”
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Seeking New AFF Members! a note from AFF Board Secretary Jennifer Anderson Hey, folk festival friends! ’Tis the season to apply for a set at the folk festival, to think about attending or teaching workshops, to look forward to Folk Week, events, dances…and it might be time to renew your membership in the AFF. (And, if you haven’t joined, how about now?) Also, our IRS status as a nonprofit and our general philosophy rely on individual monetary gifts to keep this festival rolling, year after year, we could sure use some new members. Could you help us by putting forth a special and deliberate effort to bring in new members between now and the end of the year? Send them to anchoragefolkfestival.org, and ask them to mention your name when they sign up. We’ll track our progress on a special page on our website this winter. I’m looking forward to seeing a fabulous boost in member numbers soon! |
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★ REMEMBER: Performer applications on the AFF website close on November 1. ★ |
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We Greatly Appreciate Our 2024 Sponsors! We couldn’t do this without the support of our sponsors. Their support comes in lots of forms—every bit of it valuable to us. Patronize them and thank them when you have a chance! 90.3 KNBA • Acoustic Alaska Guitar Camp • AKIMI • Alaska Airlines • Alaska Community Foundation • Alaska Music & Sound • Alaska Piping & Drumming Society • Alaska Railroad • Alaska Rock Gym • Alaska School of Music • Alaska Solar • Alaska State Council on the Arts • Alaskan Yurt Rentals • Alyeska Resort • Anchorage Concert Association • Anchorage Mandolin Orchestra • Anchorage Oral and Implant Surgery • Arctic Roadrunner • Baxter Senior Living • Bear Tooth Theatrepub • Both Ears Live Sound • Calais Company, Inc. • ConocoPhillips Alaska • Cynosure Brewing • Denali Brewing Co. • First National Bank Alaska • GCI • Guido’s Pizza • Habitat for Humanity ReStore • HDR • Hearth Artisan Pizza • Hotel Captain Cook • Irish Club of Alaska • Kaladi Brothers Coffee • Keys to Life Alaska • Dr. Tim Lethin, DDS • Mammoth Music • Marvin Woodworks • Middle Way Café • Municipality of Anchorage • The Music Man • The Nave • Nordstrom Chiropractic • Odd Man Rush Brewing • ODOM Corporation • Organic Oasis • John Absjørn Osnes • Paramount Cycles • Parlor in the Round • Peak AK Next Level Performance • Petr’s Violin Shop • Playful Arts Music Studio • Rasmuson Foundation • Recover Alaska • Reilly’s • Rising Tide • Salmon Berry Travel and Tours • Salmonfest • Santos Oil Search Alaska • Saturday Sensation • Shirts Up • Skeetawk • Sleepy Dog Coffee Co. • Society of Strings • Todd Grebe and Angela Oudean • Touchstone Executive Coaching • UAA Concert Board • WellRounded Arts • Writer’s Block Bookstore & Café |
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Halloween Music-Making Fun! ![]() What makes creepy music? Find out for yourself, and make your own scary tune! |
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Anchorage Folk Festival PO Box 243034 Anchorage AK 99524-3034 folks@anchoragefolkfestival.org EIN 92-0142926 2024–25 Board of Directors Johnse Ostman, President • Pamela Pope, Vice President • Jill Phelps, Treasurer • Jennifer Anderson, Secretary • Peter Johnson • Lucy Peckham • Marianne See • Marty Severin • Natalie Tucker Newsletter by Lucy Peckham and Mark Ellis Walker ![]() |
![]() | The Countdown: 115 days to the 36th Annual Festival! An Anchorage Folk Festival Newsletter October 2024 | |
January 23 to February 2, 2025 ★ ATTENTION! Performer Applications Open Today, October 1, through November 1, 2024. Information about applying and more will be coming soon to the AFF website. | ||
In This Issue
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Introducing the 2025 Festival’s Guest Artists AJ Lee & Blue Summit are an award-winning energetic, charming, and technically jaw-dropping band quickly rising on the national roots-music scene. Based in Santa Cruz, California, the group met as teenagers, picking and jamming together as kids at local music festivals and jams until, one day, they decided they would be a band. “Our roots go really deep,” explains de facto band leader AJ Lee. “We met when we were young kids… We definitely decided to choose each other as a chosen family band later on in life, but in a lot of ways it was naturally just like that in the beginning.” “It was like one of those late-at-night things,” she continued. “We were sitting on a trailer at Grass Valley” at the annual Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival held in the Sierra Nevada foothills—“Someone said, ‘All of us right here, we’re a band now.’ We kind of didn’t take it seriously, but we were like, okay, we’ll be a band!” Currently made up of Lee on mandolin, fiddler Jan Purat, and guitarists Scott Gates and Sullivan Tuttle, the band carries that youthful, festival-parking-lot energy with them still today, but at the same time there’s a genuine ease and confidence to their music-making. This is not the bluegrass of ambitious musicians intent on industry success; this is music made firstly for the joy of making it and primarily made for each other. Lee & Blue Summit seem unconcerned with mimicking hugely successful jamgrass bands, or making competitive and performatively intellectual new acoustic music, or wishing to establish themselves as the superlative string band in their bluegrass, old-time, and Americana communities. Instead, they’re most interested in discovering themselves, their own music, and sonics and textures truly their own. The group is proud to be Californian, proud to represent the neo-traditionalist bluegrass and folk from the state and the mighty communities surrounding them. Their music shines with this “think global, act local” sort of approach. Perhaps this is why it feels like, whether on stage or in the studio, Blue Summit pours all of themselves into every song, every lyric, and every note. | ||
Grammy-nominated Zydeco innovator Corey Ledet Zydeco is a world traveler, having performed in 15 countries. He’s done numerous tours across North America, including countless festivals, private parties, major company corporate events, and weddings. In 2012, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for his Nothin’ But the Best album, then again in 2021 he was nominated for his self-titled album on Nouveau Electric Records; both albums are available on all digital distribution sites. Having studied his Creole culture and music thoroughly, Corey Ledet’s versatile and traditional sound guarantees to please and rock any audience. Corey remains true to his roots. He keeps one foot firmly in the tradition while exploring surrounding influences in order to create the “best of both worlds.” He is able to infuse old and new styles of Zydeco and blues into his own unique sound. Whether Corey’s backed by a full band (as he is bringing to Anchorage) or playing a solo gathering, you as a listener will always be highly entertained. He finds joy in giving his audience a true dance/music experience, so come and enjoy this music tied to tradition. | ||
Helpful Hints on Applying to Play at the Anchorage Folk Festival This ran in the last issue but is worth repeating… Are you ready to apply for a set this year at the Anchorage Folk Festival? If not, get cracking! Applications will go live on the website on the first of October and will close at the end of the day on November 1, giving you 32 days to apply. Here are some tips to help you through the process. 1. Know who your band members are when you apply. The application will ask for all those names. 2. Know your available dates during the festival to the best of your knowledge, so that the scheduling committee has good information to schedule your set. Evening spots are very limited, and you are more likely to get scheduled if you indicate a lot of availability. 3. Avoid duplicate and redundant applications. We usually receive many more applications than we have sets. If you have multiple submissions under different band names, we are not likely to schedule all the submissions. We are trying to give everyone a chance to play, so multiples will be put on the wait list. 4. If you are not a member of the Anchorage Folk Festival, consider joining! A link will be provided from the application form. 5. The application requires a responsible person to give their name, phone number and email address. The scheduling committee sometimes has to call a band representative while scheduling. 6. Don’t be alarmed by the request for a link to a previous recording or performance. It’s not an audition. It helps us to schedule a variety of performances. If you don’t have one, it will not impact your chances of being scheduled. 7. Be sure to submit before midnight November 1, 2025. Late applications will not be considered. 8. The scheduling committee will maintain a waiting list of performers in case of cancellations. Make certain you give us a working email address and check it frequently if you are on the Standby waitlist. Email is the primary way we will get ahold of you. After applying, remember that your AncFF mainstage performance and lyrics must be family-friendly and in compliance with the Festival’s commitment to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all members of our audiences, staff, clients, volunteers, subcontractors, performers, vendors, and clients. Please plan and rehearse your set accordingly. Finally, remember that the set is 15 minutes long, but that includes your setup time. Plan and rehearse a 12-minute set, including your song introductions. | ||
★ Performer applications are open TODAY through November 1. Information about applying and more will be coming soon to the AFF website. ★ | ||
We Greatly Appreciate Our 2024 Sponsors! We couldn’t do this without the support of our sponsors. Their support comes in lots of forms—every bit of it valuable to us. Patronize them and thank them when you have a chance! 90.3 KNBA • | ||
The Festival’s Goals and Mission As applications open today for 15-minute mainstage sets, and longer Folk Week sets, it seems a good time to remind everyone what the Anchorage Folk Festival strives to be. Our Mission Statement “The primary mission of the Anchorage Folk Festival is to operate and perpetuate an annual folk arts festival in Anchorage, featuring live performance by the broadest possible representation of community performers. The purpose of the Festival is to acquaint and educate the general public about the folk arts and to provide a symposium for the interchange of cultural and performance ideas regarding folk art in the community. “The Festival will maintain a tradition of free public admission and encourage live performance by non-professional artists and shall be defined as a non-profit educational and charitable corporation in accordance with Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.” The Anchorage Folk Festival does hire professional guest bands and a professional artist each year but contractually requires the guest bands to teach workshops to educate and inspire our community members. The heart of the festival is the 15-minute sets by local performers and the creative workshops—free and open to the public for all ages. Do you have music, art, poetry, story-telling or other folk arts to share? Apply for a set, AND sign up to teach a workshop! | ||
“Animal or Instrument?” Quiz The Anchorage Folk Festival only continues through the strength and support of our youth, starting from the very young! To reinforce that idea and just for fun, each newsletter will include something for the young (or young at heart). Enjoy this fun ear test from the Carnegie Hall Kids page! | ||
Anchorage Folk Festival PO Box 243034 Anchorage AK 99524-3034 folks@anchoragefolkfestival.org EIN 92-0142926 2024–25 Board of Directors Johnse Ostman, President • Pamela Pope, Vice President • Jill Phelps, Treasurer • Jennifer Anderson, Secretary • Peter Johnson • Lucy Peckham • Marianne See • Marty Severin • Natalie Tucker Newsletter by Lucy Peckham and Mark Ellis Walker ![]() |
![]() | Let the Countdown to the 36th Annual Anchorage Folk Festival Begin! An Anchorage Folk Festival Newsletter September 2024 | ||||
January 23 to February 2, 2025 ★ ATTENTION! Performer applications open on October 1. Information about applying and more will be coming soon to the AFF website. | |||||
In This Issue
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Introducing the 2025 Festival’s Visual Artist Choosing a visual artist to represent each festival is one of the most fun tasks that the AFF Board has. Anyone can nominate an artist. It doesn’t have to come from a Board member, though the Board must make the final decision since the artwork will be on posters, programs, T-shirts, sweatshirts, and hang over the stage. The Board usually reviews the options we have been given, look at their artwork online, and one of us will talk to the artist to make sure that they are interested and inspired by the idea of art for the festival. Over the years, the Anchorage Folk Festival has certainly been blessed with some iconic images from a wide variety of artists; we are confident that this year will be another! Please meet the 2025 Festival Visual Artist: Lee Post! Lee Post, a.k.a. Post Marks, is an illustrator and community advocate in the heart of Spenard. His fun and uplifting illustrations can be seen all over our community. He offers well-loved comics classes all over the state. He also performs graphic recording to illustrate notes for meetings, conferences, and public events as they happen. In addition to his art, Lee retired from twenty-three years of work with at-risk youth but continues to work with kids in local schools and the community as well advocating for better treatment and housing options for youth. See Post Marks’s work online at Postmarks.graphics and on Instagram @Postmarks.graphics. | |||||
Guess Who’s Coming to Anchorage! ![]()
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Summer Music in Alaska My outdoor musical experience started this spring with hearing Blackwater Railroad Company at Skeetawk ski area in Hatchers Pass, where I ski patrol. The third weekend in May, I headed to the Mermaid Festival in Seward for more Blackwater Railroad and many other local talents. The California Honeydrops at Creekbend in Hope was an awesome sunny outdoor concert; some band-member additions made this great band even better. Volunteer-run Arctic Valley had their Chugachfest solstice camping and music experience, and the free Girdwood Forest Fair was rich with local talent. Then it was time for Salmonfest, on the Kenai peninsula, and this year it truly was a fun three days of sun, fun, salmon, and music. I’m a volunteer medic, and even from my perspective it truly was a safe, friendly, and great music-rich event. So many great bands…some of my favorites: The Devil Makes Three, Tim Easton, and local bands such as H3, Wiley Post, Hope Social, Luna and Ursus, and Roland Roberts Band. My year ended with attending the 22nd Acoustic AlaskaGuitar Camp that includes the Instructor Concert at the Wilda Marston Theatre at the Z.J. Loussac Library. We are so lucky to have amazing Instructors coming to Alaska; this year were LJ, past lead guitarist from Wings, and other professional award-winning artists such as Keith Yoder and Steve Kaufman from Maryville, Tennessee, Jackson Emmer, Jon Shain, Megan Gregory, and Gerald Jones. I couldn’t get to them all, so remember to consider catching Chickenstock, which is held in Chicken, Alaska. In Cordova, the Copper River Salmon Jam is a family-friendly, two-day, mid-July festival of music, poetry, art, and dance held at the ski area. It benefits Cordova art programs and is just a fun ferry ride away from Whittier. I can’t list them all, and I don’t know them all, but they are a rich addition to music in Alaska in the summertime! ![]() | |||||
Helpful Hints on Applying to Play at the Anchorage Folk Festival Are you ready to apply for a set this year at the Anchorage Folk Festival? If not, get cracking! Applications will go live on the website on the first of October and will close at the end of the day on November 1, giving you 32 days to apply. Here are some tips to help you through the process. 1. Know who your band members are when you apply. The application will ask for all those names. 2. Know your available dates during the festival to the best of your knowledge, so that the scheduling committee has good information to schedule your set. Evening spots are very limited, and you are more likely to get scheduled if you indicate a lot of availability. 3. Avoid duplicate and redundant applications. We usually receive many more applications than we have sets. If you have multiple submissions under different band names, we are not likely to schedule all the submissions. We are trying to give everyone a chance to play, so multiples will be put on the wait list. 4. If you are not a member of the Anchorage Folk Festival, consider joining! A link will be provided from the application form. 5. The application requires a responsible person to give their name, phone number and email address. The scheduling committee sometimes has to call a band representative while scheduling. 6. Don’t be alarmed by the request for a link to a previous recording or performance. It’s not an audition. It helps us to schedule a variety of performances. If you don’t have one, it will not impact your chances of being scheduled. 7. Be sure to submit before midnight November 1, 2025. Late applications will not be considered. 8. The scheduling committee will maintain a waiting list of performers in case of cancellations. Make certain you give us a working email address and check it frequently if you are on the Standby waitlist. Email is the primary way we will get ahold of you. After applying, remember that your AncFF mainstage performance and lyrics must be family-friendly and in compliance with the Festival’s commitment to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all members of our audiences, staff, clients, volunteers, subcontractors, performers, vendors, and clients. Please plan and rehearse your set accordingly. Finally, remember that the set is 15 minutes long, but that includes your setup time. Plan and rehearse a 12-minute set, including your song introductions. | |||||
★ Performer applications open on October 1. Information about applying and more will be coming soon to the AFF website. ★ | |||||
We Greatly Appreciate Our 2024 Sponsors! We couldn’t do this without the support of our sponsors. Their support comes in lots of forms—every bit of it valuable to us. Patronize them and thank them when you have a chance! 90.3 KNBA • | |||||
Word Jumble: Folk Instruments Find the following words in the puzzle. Words can run left-to-right, top-to-bottom, or diagonally down to the right. (A print-quality version is available too.)
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Anchorage Folk Festival PO Box 243034 Anchorage AK 99524-3034 folks@anchoragefolkfestival.org EIN 92-0142926 2024–25 Board of Directors Johnse Ostman, President • Pamela Pope, Vice President • Jill Phelps, Treasurer • Jennifer Anderson, Secretary • Peter Johnson • Lucy Peckham • Marianne See • Marty Severin • Natalie Tucker Newsletter by Lucy Peckham and Mark Ellis Walker ![]() |
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