PORT TOWNSEND — Centrum will offer some 30 public events, 11 of which are free, between the Fourth of July and Aug. 4.
“Choosing the best among some 240 artists who will sweep through Fort Worden State park during that time may not be easy, but the following is an inside scoop from the staff about who not to miss,” said Bonnie Obremski, part-time marketing and communications manager.
Thomas Maupin of Tennessee will preform flatfoot buck dancing on the Fourth of July. The National Endowment for the Arts named him a National Heritage Fellow just a few months ago for his mastery of the art, which is somewhat related to clogging, Obremski said.
Maupin will dance during the Fiddles on the Fourth concert at the McCurdy Pavilion at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Tickets are $16, $26 and $32. Centrum provides free youth tickets for all its concerts for students 18 and younger.
“In addition, there is a rare chance to see musicians from the Tejano fiddling genre,” Obremski said.
Fiddler Belen Escobedo — a master of the disappearing art form — will board her first plane to come to Port Townsend to play with two of her fellow Tejano musicians during the Fiddle Tunes Finale at 1:30 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $16, $26 and $32.
Following Fiddle Tunes is the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, Obremski said. Each night of the July 15-21 conference will feature a free reading session from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the Wheeler Theater.
“If you can’t make them all, carve out Tuesday and Saturday evenings,” Obremski said.
Tuesday, July 17, will feature Melissa Febos, a former New York dominatrix and author of “Whip Smart” (St. Martin’s Press 2010) and the essay collection, “Abandon Me” (Bloomsbury 2017), which The New Yorker called “mesmerizing.”
Saturday, July 21 will feature Ilya Kaminsky. Kaminsky was born in Odessa, in Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union in 1977, and arrived in the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the U.S. government.
The following week will be Jazz Port Townsend with artist faculty Jazzmeia Horn and George Cables.
Horn, of New York, won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Vocal Jazz Competition in 2015, Obremski said.
She will perform at the McCurdy Pavilion at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, July 28 and later that evening during the Jazz in the Clubs concert series in the Fort Worden Chapel. The McCurdy performance tickets cost $32, $43, and $56. Clubs wristbands are $25 per night.
Cables, meanwhile will be returning as a Jazz Port Townsend faculty member for the 35th time, Obremski said.
Cables, 73, also of New York City, said Port Townsend “feels like home.”
He has inspired and mentored many workshop participants who later became established musicians, Obremski said.
He remembered seeing vocalist and pianist Diana Krall pass through the workshop in the late ’80s. Following her time at Centrum, Krall wrote a letter to former Port Townsend Mayor Barney McClure, who managed Jazz Port Townsend at the time.
She wrote: “I wish to thank you for all your help and encouragement in P.Town. The clinic was absolutely wonderful and I was very fortunate to be able to spend a week with such incredible players. … To think a couple of months ago, I was ready to consider doing something else.”
Cables will perform during Jazz in the Clubs in the Fort Worden Chapel at 10 p.m. Friday, July 27, and at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 28, at the McCurdy Pavilion. That Pavilion concert tickets cost $28, $38 and $48.
“The following week, blues fans won’t want to miss these two musicians: Jontavious Willis, a young up-and-coming star taking a week off the TajMo tour to come to Port Townsend, and Jimmy “Duck” Homes, a proprietor of one of the oldest juke joints in Mississippi,” Obremski said.
Willis grew up singing gospel music in church with his grandfather. When he was 14, he came across a YouTube video of Muddy Waters playing “Hoochie Coochie Man” and was hooked, Obremski said. Four years later he was playing on Taj Mahal’s stage.
Willis will perform at 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 3, in Fort Worden’s JFK building during the Blues in the Clubs concert series. (wristband $25)
He will then play at 1:30 p.m. Saturday Aug. 4 in the McCurdy Pavilion ($27, $40, $48) and then at 9:15 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 4, in the Wheeler Theater.
Holmes is one of the oldest active purveyors of the Bentonia country blues tradition, Obremski said.
He will perform at 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 3, at the Wheeler Theater (wristband $25), at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 4, in the McCurdy Pavilion ($27, $40, $48) and at 9:15 p.m. that night at the Rainshadow Recording studio within the Fort.
For more information, and for tickets, see http://centrum.org/.
