Honor George Wein, founder of the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals
Clearwater, founded by Pete Seeger to help clean up the Hudson River, will present a benefit concert for their Environmental Educational Programs on Friday, October 21 at 8pm at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space in NYC. We’ve just added Loudon Wainwright III to the bill. Other featured performers include: Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Suzanne Vega, Lucy Kaplansky, Tom Paxton, Guy Davis, David Amram, Toshi Reagon, Richard Barone, and others to be announced.
Music festival impresario George Wein will also be honored this evening with the first annual “Power of Song Award.” Wein, a celebrated American festival producer as well as a close friend of the Seeger family, founded the Newport Folk in 1959 backed by board members Pete Seeger, Theodore Bikel, Oscar Brand, and Albert Grossman. The festival became renowned for introducing a number of performers who went on to become major stars, most notably Joan Baez (who appeared as an unannounced guest of Bob Gibson in 1959), and Bob Dylan, whose first Newport appearance, as a guest of Joan Baez in 1963, is generally regarded as his premiere national performance.
Wein also founded the Newport Jazz Festival, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the Playboy Jazz Festival in Los Angeles and the JVC Jazz Festival in cities around the world including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris, Warsaw, and Tokyo.
Tickets for this show range from $70-$90 and are now available at www.SymphonySpace.org, or by calling 212-864-5400. Click here to purchase your tickets online. A limited amount of $250 tickets include premium seating and a post concert reception with the artists.
Proceeds from the concert benefit Hudson River Sloop Clearwater’s educational programs.
