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NB Roots&Branches returns for a second season with with bold expansions of programming, venues, and musical variety! On Saturday July 20, the 2nd annual NB Roots & Branches Fest will present a day of acoustic music, visual art, and one-of-a-kind performance experiences by and for the people. Our 100% free public festival will include 8 continuously running performance areas and a culminating event that is both contemporarily unique and also directly tied to the city’s rich cultural past. This year’s edition also builds on the huge successes of the 2023 festival’s music events by doubling down on offerings that are simultaneously local and very broad in scope. Our performers encompass a range that includes true traditional music, indie folk, classical music, acoustic roots rock, brass bands, contemporary singers, songwriters, dance bands, jazz acts, and further flung compositional & exploratory acoustic music practitioners. NB Roots & Branches is expanding both the number of indoor and outdoor stages to meet the demand last year’s heavily attended festival established. All indoor venues from 2023 remain involved including Destination Soups turned comfy house concert locale; the Pour Farm Tavern turned retro speakeasy; the Bristol Building concert space that has been central to the New Bedford diy music revival; and the imminently comfortable AprilEvans Beauty Lounge. Cafe Arpeggio will also participate this year, lending its bright & spacious venue and its history as a marquee acoustic music room. A third outdoor stage that offers larger dance friendly bands will broaden the public footprint of the festive atmosphere outdoors.
Music offerings include everything from local rising songwriters like Molly O’Leary to a 7 piece version of the Southcoast Brass Band. They include folk mainstays like Aoife Clancy and Eddie Dillon as well as eclectic offerings like a string quartet performance from the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra and a set from the 5 piece El Caribe steel drum ensemble. There is jazz manouche from Hot Club Cheese Roll as well as avant-folk of local favorite Carl Simmons. And, as was true before, NB Roots & Branches remains committed and excited to present regionally representative cultural traditional music including Amilton Tavares’ Cape Verdean dance music, Rancho Folclorico’s Portuguese dance, shape note singing, open Irish, Old Time, and Bluegrass jams, Caribbean drumming, Quebecois ensembles, and weird old Americana.
The 2024 NB Roots& Branches festival’s new unique culminating event “Moving Canvas Moving Forward” will present moving panoramas made by local visual artists in the tradition of the historical piece Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World housed at the Whaling Museum. Our many panoramas will be presented the way they’re designed to be seen: in motion. And, what’s more, they’ll be presented live with simultaneous musical performances that are directly tied to the individual pieces.
The festival is able to offer its events free to the public thanks entirely to the generosity of public funding programs and altruistic community sponsors. That list specifically includes the Massachusetts Cultural Council, New Bedford Creative, Destination New Bedford, The Symphony Music Shop, The Fiber Optic Center, The New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, and Southcoast Technologies LLC.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Downtown New Bedford, New Bedford, Massachusetts, United States
