Slide & Steel Guitars at Centrum

Hannes Coetzee Live Onstage in South Africa

[Hannes Coetzee onstage in South Africa]

Hannes Coetzee will be playing at the Port Townsend Slide and Steel Festival on June 28, at 8:00 pm at the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater and on Saturday, June 30, at 7:30 pm at McCurdy Pavilion. For tickets, call 360.385.3102, x117 or visit our secure online site here

Summer Tickets Now On Sale

We're pleased to announce that tickets are now on sale for Centrum's summer performances at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend. Highlights of the 2007 summer season include:

• Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec and Trio Solisti anchor the Port Townsend Chamber Music Festival, led by new Artistic Director Helen Callus.
• Centrum's June 10 special sneak preview of the Seattle Men’s Chorus’ new show “Scared Faithless,” a look at religion through the lens of experiences by gay men and women.
• South African teaspoon slide guitar player Hannes Coetzee and Grammy winning vocalist Laurie Lewis performing at the combined Voiceworks/Port Townsend Slide & Steel Festival.
• National Heritage Award fellows Liz Carroll and Paul Dahlin, along with the Carolina Chocolate Drops and dozens more, turning up the temperature during the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes.
• Writers Eileen Myles, Arthur Sze, Thomas Glave Camille Dungy and others whom Artistic Director Rebecca Brown says “work beyond the bounds of well-behaved American literature” at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference.
• Roberta Gambarini, the Banda Brothers Latin All-Stars and NEA Jazz Master Gerald Wilson joining Artistic Director John Clayton and others at Jazz Port Townsend, Washington’s longest-running summer jazz festival.
• The Port Townsend Country Blues Festival, the nation’s largest gathering of acoustic blues musicians, welcomes National Heritage Award winners Eddie Pennington, Henry Gray and John Cephas, as well as Robert Belfour and many more.

Information on ordering tickets is available on our Information Center site.

Orville Johnson Named First Artistic Director of the Port Townsend Slide and Steel Festival

Orville Johnson has been named the first Artistic Director of the Port Townsend Slide and Steel Festival.

"We’re blessed to be working with Orville,” said Centrum program manager Peter McCracken. “Orville is someone who has the greatest respect of players and the field. The combination of characteristics that make Orville unique, his superb musicianship, his multi-instrument virtuosity and his singing ability, will serve the Slide and Steel workshop well.”

The Port Townsend Slide and Steel Festival is the only week-long experience in the nation devoted to the repertoire and technique of slide and steel guitar. The Festival is a total-immersion workshop presenting many styles of slide guitar music and pedal steel guitar music. The workshop’s wide spectrum includes workshop sessions, faculty demonstrations, tutorials, concerts, open jams, parties, and informal and spontaneous gatherings.

Participants in this gathering have basic technical command of their instrument, as well as basic
knowledge of music theory. Differing levels of ability are expected, and classes are designed to accommodate those differences.

Guitar Virtuoso Terry Robb

Pass Terry Robb on a Portland street, and you probably wouldn’t look twice at this soft-spoken, serious-minded guy who easily blends in with the crowd. Catch him in the middle of a gig, however, and you’ll find a passionate, precise player whose ability to grind out hot shot licks makes for a commanding onstage presence. It’s like watching Clark Kent turn into Superman.

Terry Robb has released seven CDs. He first came under the spell of the guitar as a kid; his uncle, a professional swing musician, tutored him in ragtime, blues, country, and jazz.

In the early 1980s, Robb struck up a friendship with John Fahey, who asked him to produce and play on several of Fahey’s recordings. One of these, Let Go, was cited by Rolling Stone as one of the top three releases of 1983, alongside Prince’s Purple Rain and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA.

In the 1990s, Terry moved to focus on his own career. He toured nationally with rocker Steve Miller, appeared on the Conan O’Brien Show and, in the studio, contributed to a number of Grammy and Emmy award-winning projects.

Along the way, Terry's reputation grew. As he began cultivating an style that combined traditional blues elements with more licks drawn from the jazz world he developed a following of his own, winning the Cascade Blues Association’s Muddy Award a record eighteen times.

Terry will be at the 2007 Port Townsend Slide and Steel Festival, teaching, jamming, and telling stories. He'll take to the stage at McCurdy Pavilion on Saturday, June 30, at 1:30 pm. Following him will be Stacy Phillips, Bobby Black, Joe Wright, and Marley's Ghost.

Marley's Ghost in Residence at the 2007 Port Townsend Slide and Steel Festival

The entire band Marley's Ghost will be in residence at the Port Townsend Slide and Steel Festival. Individually, they'll be teaching, jamming, telling stories, and giving performances. And on Saturday, June 30, at 1:30 pm, they'll perform together in a mainstage show at McCurdy Pavilion. You can listen to clips of their music here.

Consisting of Dan Wheetman (vocals, bass, rhythm guitar, fiddle, harmonica, banjo, dobro, and lap steel), a former John Denver Band member and songwriter for Kermit the Frog; Jon Wilcox (vocals, mandolin, rhythm guitar, guitar, and bouzouki) who has toured internationally as a singer-songwriter and interpreter of traditional American and British music; Mike Phelan (vocals, lead guitars, fiddle, dobro, bass, lap steel), who records and performs in many styles, including bluegrass, rock, folk and blues; Ed Littlefield Jr. (vocals, pedal steel guitar, highland bagpipes, keyboards, mandolin, dobro, lead guitar), a product of the northern California folk scene who relocated to Washington state in the early 1970s; and Jerry Fletcher (vocals, drums, percussion, keyboards, arranger), who has been in the music business for over 30 years, working with John Denver, Steve Martin, Jimmy Rodgers, among others; Marley’s Ghost has built a singular reputation among discerning roots-music lovers for its instrumental virtuosity, ultra-tight four-part harmonies and animated live performances.

Producer and musician Van Dyke Parks describing the setting for Marley's ghost recent release, Spooked, in the following way: “Sage Arts Studio is...on the banks of an unpronounceable river in the state of Washington," he said. "We could see eagles with salmon in their talons, flying over the riverbanks. It’s a rustic setting for a studio that is a combination of thoroughly modern stuff and everything of value from the golden age of analog recording." The driving principle of Spooked, Parks said, “was to reverence the form in this music, and find its strength, and at the same time kind of skewer it.” 

Stacy Phillips to Teach and Perform at the Port Townsend Slide and Steel Festival

Internationally acclaimed slide guitarist (and recognized authority on the history of the slide) Stacy Phillips will be hanging out at the 2007 Port Townsend Slide and Steel Festival, June 24-30. He is leading workshops all that week, and will give a mainstage performance at McCurdy Pavilion on Saturday, June 30, at 1:30 pm.

In addition to being a stellar player, Stacy is the author of more than twenty-five teaching and repertoire books, as well as instructional DVDs for the lap slide. He is one of the most highly regarded teachers of the lap slide in the country, and has played a central role in its resurgent popularity.

In addition, he has performed with top acoustic musicians all over the world, including David Bromberg, Judy Collins, Leon Redbone, Peter Rowan, Johnny Gimble, and Mark O'Connor.

Besides his own albums, Stacy was one of the prominently featured performers of the CD The Great Dobro Sessions, which garnered a Grammy Award.