2007 Grammy Award-winner, Dan Zanes & Friends will perform in Basin Park on May 15th during the 3:00-5:00 Free Music in the Park for May Festival of the Arts.
Dan Zanes & Friends will perform in Basin Park on May 15th
Two things stand out about Zanes: he is making homemade family music and encouraging similar behaviors in friends and neighbors. Second, he is the guy who is always interested in singing along with people, people everywhere. In fact, Zanes has made a mission of introducing his musical friends to his neighborhood friends and then showing everybody not just that they, yes, can play together but that they can also feel pretty good while doing so. In this sense, Zanes is a twenty-first century version of the guy who in the old days used to conduct the town band from the gazebo, though in lieu of a gazebo he’s playing places like Carnegie Hall and the Melbourne International Arts Festival, where no matter how you say it good music is good. He is a ringmaster, introducing new songs and reconnecting people to songs that have always been there, and still are—it’s just that people forgot about them.
This performance is provided as an event of the Artosphere – Arkansas’ Arts + Nature Festival that will be taking place all around the region starting on April 22nd. Artosphere is created and presented by the Walton Arts Center.
Note: There will also be Lantern Painting in the Park as part of the Grand Illumination weekend – fun for the whole family at Basin Park.
Accolades for Zanes & Friends (more info at his website):
Dan Zanes and Friends’ Catch That Train! was the 2007 Grammy Award winner for Best Musical Album for Children (co-released with Starbucks/Hear Music).
“Dan Zanes is enriching the field with his dance-party, hootenanny for the 21st century…”
LA Times
“True children’s music, but executed with such sweet (and un-gooey!) humor, casual multiculturalism and shambling groove that you can call it your own.”
The New York Times
“Wry, rootsy, real American folk music – songs that twist a little plangency into the sweetness of a melody, songs that feel like life.”
Rolling Stone Magazine
