Springfield’s Summer Arts Festival

One of the things I most enjoy about living in Springfield is its Summer Art Festival. This is a series of free performances ranging from Shakespearean plays to children’s choirs to country music acts to symphony performances that are staged over a six-week period every summer. The performances are staged in a new amphitheater located in a beautiful natural setting at the base of a cliff next to Buck Creek. The amphitheater itself blends into its natural setting in keeping with the principles of Frank Lloyd Wright (there is a Frank Lloyd Wright house that has been converted into a museum in Springfield)

My favorite performance was the National Player’s summer tour production of “The Tempest”. The National Players are the longest-running classical touring troupe in he nation. They feature young cast members drawn from the graduates of the top theater programs in the country. They crisscross the USA gaining experience in all aspects of theater production from the actual performance itself to erecting the set and setting up the lighting. It was a first rate production. One of the more interesting aspects of the play itself for me was Shakespeare’s treatment, rather sophisticated for his day, of society’s attitudes toward the more “primitive” peoples with whom Europeans were coming into increased contact in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Prior to the play the members of Springfield Stageworks treated the audience to a reading of Shakespeare’s sonnets, National Players cast members explained the background and significance of “The Tempest” as well as some of the themes explored in the play, and a music professor at Wittenberg and Cedarville universities and one of his students played the lute and two or three models of flute, all of which were popular during Shakespeare’s day. The lute is one of the more beautiful instruments I have ever heard. There were about two or three thousand people in attendance.

I was privileged to be able to attend a performance by Warren Hill, one of the top smooth jazz artists of the past twenty years. This was the first time that I had ever seen a professional saxophonist in person! The show really blew my socks off. I plan on buying his CD next month.

During the festival’s Irish Fest phase I got to see two excellent Celtic bands. The first of these, Cherish the Ladies, is the most successful Irish-American Celtic band. They have performed all over the world and received numerous awards, including the BBC’s Best Musical Group of the Year Award and a Grammy nomination. I was fascinated by the Irish stepdancing and the pennywhistle. This was the first time that I have ever heard what is surely one of the most beautiful instruments in the world.

The next night I got to see Homeland, a local Celtic band that travels extensively throughout Ohio and the neighboring states, often playing such local haunts as the Dublin Pub. I will definitely make plans to hear them in person again in the near future.

I also attended the performance by The India Children's Choir. This is a choir composed of children from the Hmar tribe of India. This is a former headhunting tribe that was Christianized by missionaries (a real-life cliché). Every year the children of this tribe compete for slots in the India Children’s Choir. The winners get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend nine months touring the United States putting on shows. I enjoyed the program. At the end of the show the children, who are around nine or ten years of age, made their way through the audience hugging the attendees. For the audience the show is an opportunity to see that children from all around the world are the same.