Best Day of the Year. (No, Really.)

As you probably know if you're reading this blog, we're kicking off the Minnesota Orchestra's Sommerfest this weekend, beginning as usual with the massive, day-and-night-long Day of Music. Considering how many thousands of people this event draws every year, it's difficult to imagine that anyone who regularly attends the orchestra hasn't been yet, but if you haven't, for some reason: for God's sake, get yourself down to Peavey Plaza tomorrow! Yes, all the performances are still 100% free, and yes, that means first come, first seated for the indoor shows, and yes, that does mean you have to get there super early if you want to see us play Tchaikovsky's 5th at 8pm, but honestly, even if you don't make it into Orchestra Hall at all, the rest of the acts should keep you more than satisfied. (Unless, of course, it thunderstorms, which I'm told is a possibility. If it does, I think we can all assume that it's Paul Douglas's nefarious revenge on his former employer and our Day of Music media partner.)

When a couple of our management types, now long gone from the organization, conceived the Day of Music back in the early part of this decade, I'm not sure they had any notion that it would become the local music phenomenon that it has. The acts that have played on our stages over the years run the gamut from electronica to roots rock to hip-hop to world beat to old-time folk, always with a healthy dose of the kind of straight-ahead club rock that Minneapolis is known for. I've loved it from the start, and more than once, I stayed at the hall all night after we finished (one year, I even got to introduce Gary Louris of the Jayhawks and Adam Levy of the Honeydogs to a screaming crowd at a midnight show,) finally heading home when the children's music started up on Saturday morning.

Oh, and the orchestra plays as well. And that's actually one of the great ironies of the whole enterprise: supposedly the centerpiece of the whole event, the orchestra actually winds up being just another performance in the massive slate. Much of what gets written by local rock critics about the Day of Music doesn't even mention that our staff are the ones who book, coordinate, and organize the entire operation. It's a counter-intuitive way of marketing yourself as an orchestra, but I love that someone had the guts to try it, because it makes the whole day seem like Minneapolis's event, not the Minnesota Orchestra offering a supporting role to a few bands. And despite the enormous expense (in both money and time) of putting on a free event of this magnitude, I know that it's worth it, because the people who fill the hall for our 8pm concert are always the most enthusiastic crowd we see all year long, and a fair number of them have told me they've never been to see us before, and that they're definitely coming back.

Anyway, like I say, if you've never been, you need to come. The Day of Music kicks off Friday at noon, and runs through Saturday at 3pm. (They'll take an overnight break this year from 1am-9am, which makes me a little bit sad, but is probably a good idea, since the years I stayed all night, the spectators tended to be outnumbered by the musicians and staff by 3am .) If you're looking for a few great acts worth seeing, Star Tribune pop critic Chris Riemenscheider's got you covered. I like his list, and I'd throw in the Honeydogs (8pm on the Peavey Plaza south stage,) the Spaghetti Western String Company (10pm over on WCCO-TV's plaza stage,) and the Charles Lazarus Group (4pm on Peavey north) as well. See you there...

Postscript, 10.49pm: Okay, fine, so everything outdoors got rained out before 10pm. Whatever. We had fun inside. And it's actually sort of amazing that we got through seven full years of this event without a rainout, so I guess we were due. (I'm still blaming Paul Douglas, though. His known pal Don Shelby was walking all too casually around the plaza about three hours before the deluge, and I'm guessing he was doing an elaborate slow-motion rain dance on Doug's behalf...)