By Gail A. Reynolds, Rock At Night Columnist
Why would anyone attend a free top notch concert in air conditioned comfort when they could spend $50 or more on stadium seats out in the elements where the performers are mere specs on the stage and sound quality is dubious?
This tongue-in-cheek rhetoric is inspired by a recent Sunday afternoon blues concert at the New River Public Library in Wesley Chapel, Florida, a bit north of Tampa.
Guitarist Paul Hardage, AKA Sarasota Slim, accompanied by a keyboard, bass, and drums ensemble, played an impressively tight two hour blues set. This free event was presented by Pasco County’s Friends of the Library and the Otis G. Pike Charitable Trust, in conjunction with the Suncoast Blues Society, which sponsors a multi-county Blues in The Library program.
This concert was the kickoff of the library Friends’ Passport Concert Series, which will offer Pasco County, Florida patrons an opportunity to “Travel the world through music” and experience a variety of musical genre in its seven libraries. The spectrum of musical forms range from an old time string band to a classical wind ensemble, as well as disco and Latin rhythms.
The delightful Sunday afternoon of blues underscores the power of diverse community organizations to promote and preserve our precious art heritage.
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I love music and I love to write, so Rock at Night is a perfect forum for me.I appreciate all genres from classical to country and am astounded by the number of extraordinarily talented but under-recognizedmusical artists. So my articles often feature such “well known unknown” musicians and composers.
Before email, I would include a record review along with my holiday greetings as an alternative to annual reports of personal achievements and acquisitions. Among these, I wrote of Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man in 1988 and Bruce Cockburn’s Nothing But A Burning Light in 1991, urging my friends and family to listen to these masterpieces.
Now I can continue to express my enthusiasm for various musical artists to a wider audience.
- Album Review: Craig Chee and Sarah Maisel’s ‘Christmas Island’ - December 19, 2019
- Free For All: community supported high quality music - September 29, 2019
- Album Review: John Prine’s ‘The Tree of Forgiveness’ - February 9, 2019
