Willamette Valley Music Fest brings the beat to campus streets

The heart of the UO campus will morph into a pulsing arts district featuring Northwest-bred artists during the Willamette Valley Music Festival this Saturday.

The 46th annual festival will run from noon to midnight May 7. Organized by students working in the Center for Student Involvement, the festival is a free, one-day, multistage music and arts festival for both students and the surrounding community to come together and celebrate creative talent from Eugene and the Northwest.

The festival will offer a variety of musical genres, including hip-hop, funk, electronic, DJ sets, rock, folk, ska and jazz.

Performances will include local Eugene artists such as Fortune’s Folly, Evergreen, Childspeak, Trucks Go Easy and The Nouns, as well as artists from Portland, Seattle and one Los Angeles-based artist.

Among the performers will be Seattle-based hip-hop artist Sol, whose “Yours Truly” album reached No. 1 on the iTunes hip-hop chart in 2012. Manatee Commune, voted best electronic artist in Seattle by Seattle Weekly, will also perform.

In addition to music sets, several art performances will be on tap, including a live 3D chalk artist, bounce aerial gymnastics, a live spray paint artist and a fire dance performance.

This year the festival will introduce an education component featuring a music branding workshop from guest professor Mark Samples and an interactive demonstration by the UO’s music technology ensemble, the Oregon Electronic Device Orchestra.

Performances will take place at two main venues, the main stage located adjacent to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in the Memorial Quad and the garden stage located on the lawn between Susan Campbell and Hendricks halls. The music branding workshop will take place at 3 p.m. in Room 204 Chapman hall, and the fire performance will be held outside Gerlinger Hall and Annex.

Willamette Valley Music Festival campus partners include campus radio station KWVA 88.1 FM, UO Event Services, UO Club Sports and the UO music technology department.

All the details can be found on the website wvmf.uoregon.edu, or via email at wvmf@uoregon.edu.

—By Karen Schmidt-MacKenzie, Student Life Communications