Virtual concert looks back and ahead Wednesday night

Bobbie Lancaster performing her song “Woven,” featured in Wednesday’s Greencastle Virtual Music Festival concert.

Courtesy photo

The Greencastle Virtual Music Festival continues this week with “Looking Back and Ahead.”

As the world recognizes a year since in-person indoor concerts (and so many other activities) came to a halt due to the pandemic lockdown, festival founder and host Eric Edberg will tell the story of the 2005 beginnings of the Greencastle Summer Music Festival, and how after taking the summer of 2020 off, the concerts resumed as virtual events in October 2020.

The program will also serve as a fundraising kickoff for the rest of the 2021 virtual series as well as a resumption of live concerts as soon as they can resume.

While Edberg is still finalizing the musical selections for the Wednesday evening show, he says it is sure to include a wide array of the many local classical, blues, jazz and folk artists who have appeared on the 21 weekly concerts to date, as well as out-of-town performers such as Hubby Jenkins, the specialist in African American folk music who performed in February, and legendary violinist Mark O’Connor, who will appear in a special live-stream performance, sponsored by the DePauw Performing Arts Series, on April 7.

“We’ll definitely include Bobbie Lancaster and friends performing her song ‘Woven,’ which we featured in our first Wednesday show, ‘Woven Together,’” Edberg says. “This is a special opportunity to look at how we continue to celebrate and create community through shared arts experiences, even while physically distanced from each other.”

The pre-recorded 45-minute concert goes “live” at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and can be heard and seen:

-- In a watch party with post-concert discussion hosted by Eric Edberg at http://watch.gvmf.live

-- At facebook.com/greencastlevirtualmusic

-- At greencastlemusic.org.

All previous weekly programs are available at http://playlist.gvmf.live.

The Greencastle Virtual Music Festival programs are made possible by the Greencastle Summer Music Festival family of donors and the GSMF endowment at the Putnam County Community Foundation, the Putnam County Convention and Visitors Bureau, the DePauw Performing Arts Series, the Inn at DePauw, the people of Gobin Church, and in partnership with the Sunny Side concert series.

Contributions, which provide income for musicians impacted by the pandemic shutdown of live performances, can be made at greencastlemusic.org/donate.