Tag Archives: COVID-19

Vintage Band Festival is Back!

Have you heard the news??

Vintage Band Festival 2021 will take place July 31, 2021. Exactly 425 days will have elapsed since VBF’s last public event: the Swing into Leap Year Dance on February 29, 2020. It’s been a long time coming. With the lifting of restrictions by the Governor’s office a couple of weeks ago, it looks like our outdoor event in Bridge Square can be held safely.

We’re going to have a great lineup for 12 hours of brass band enjoyment. The evening schedule is set. At 5:30 on the Wenger Showmobile Stage we’ll have Southside Aces, a fantastic Twin Cities jazz ensemble led by Tony Baluff on clarinet. Copper Street Brass will take the stage at 6:45 and the evening will finish with the sounds of the Roseville Big Band. Copper Street Brass has appeared at every Vintage Band Festival since 2006, but the Roseville Big Band will be making its debut with us. Bring your dancing shoes!

We’ll announce the rest of the lineup just as soon as we get confirmations from everyone. Check back often at the VBF website for  the rest of the day’s schedule and other festival details.

Riverwalk Market Fair, an open-air bazaar featuring fresh produce vendors and artisans of all sorts, will again be sharing Bridge Square with Vintage Band Festival. This collaboration has been taking place for a number of years now and we love the synergy that results from the co-mingling of our audiences!

Thanks to our spring donors who stepped up during Spring Forward MN in May. We have a goal to raise $5,000 before the July festival and we’re 30% there following the May fund drive. If you can help us with a gift in any amount, please visit www.vintagebandfestival.org and click on the green “Donate” button.

This past year has been difficult for everyone and we’re looking forward to seeing all of you again in person. If you haven’t gotten a COVID-19 vaccination yet, please do so at your earliest opportunity. The best way to reduce the risk of virus transmission for everyone is for people to be fully vaccinated.

COVID-19 update from Vintage Band Festival

The last event that Vintage Band Festival produced took place on February 29, 2020. We had a great turnout at the Northfield Ballroom for our “Leap Year Swing Dance” with music provided by Bend in the River Big Band. Two weeks later, all live entertainment in the entire country was silenced by COVID-19. Vintage Band Festival went on hiatus for the rest of 2020.

Now that vaccines are being distributed, the medical community and governmental agencies are considering what that means for resuming activities that 12 months ago were thought of as “normal” or “routine.” We are following those discussions and announcements with great interest and trying to chart a course for Vintage Band Festival in 2021.

It’s too early for us to know whether we’ll be able to provide music this year in our usual format: outdoors in a public park. Because of that uncertainty, we are exploring options for streaming music in a virtual format. This could be live or recorded music or a combination of the two. Stay tuned for developments on this front!

In the meantime, we continue to raise funds for the future needs of Vintage Band Festival. We have recently added PayPal as an additional option for online donations at www.vintgagebandfestival.org. We also are beginning to see donors considering legacy gifts to our organization. These are larger gifts using donor-advised funds from investment portfolios. Please consult with your financial advisor if this is something you may be interested in doing. Some folks have even told us that they’re setting aside some of their stimulus money for Vintage Band Festival!

We hope this message finds you in good health and good spirits. One last thought: if you haven’t received your COVID-19 vaccination yet, please do so as soon as circumstances allow. The more people that get vaccinated, the sooner we can gather in a group setting to listen to brass bands together!

Sheldon Theatre Brass Band-VBF 2018

Tuba Christmas 2020 in Northfield has been cancelled

2020 has turned out to be like nothing any of us born after the end of World War II have ever experienced. We had to cancel the Vintage Band Festival mini-fest that would have taken place on August 1, 2020. Our community of Northfield, the town that defeated the James-Younger gang’s attempted bank robbery in 1876, cancelled the annual Defeat of Jesse James Days celebration for the first time ever since its beginning in 1948. And the internationally reknowned St. Olaf Christmas Festival for 2020 has just been cancelled. All of that will likely make the next sentence easier to understand.

The Vintage Band Festival Board of Directors has decided to cancel Tuba Christmas for 2020. The annual low brass holiday showcase was to have taken place on Saturday, December 5, 2020 at Carleton College in Northfield as it has for the past three years. However, due to the obviously compromising conditions caused by the threat of COVID-19, particularly in indoor settings, this is the wisest and safest course of action.

In the meantime, please support arts organizations of all sorts with whatever financial support and encouragement you can offer. This is a very challenging time for musicians at all levels of engagement, from school children in middle school band to professionals in the finest orchestras in the country.

We hope to bring Vintage Band Festival back to the stage in 2021 and to that end we will continue to monitor guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Minnesota Department of Health as well as our community partners here in Northfield.