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explained Mrs. Davis. “The musicians loved it. It gave them a chance to spend the day in the country. There were wonderful meals - ham and fried chicken and homemade pie.”
The people loved it too. Over six hundred attended, according to Marjorie Horne Warren, a Culpeper music teacher w ho reviewed the concerts:
“As the conductor, William Haaker, raised his baton for the opening number, the rain came down and continued through to the end of Mozart’s “Overture to Marriage of Figaro.”
For its acoustical effects and the scenic beautv of the old mill site, the “Music Festival" could not have found a better setting.”
Mrs. Warren was talking about the second concert in the series, held August 12. Other concerts were held August 19 and August 26. There was a night-time performance as well, where William Haaker played selections for the pitfno, including his own composition Soliloquy on Complete Understanding.
Mrs. Davis remembers that L.B. Merrill served as the stage manager and D.D. Miller as Coordinator. The three-week series added to the enjoyment of life in Washington as well as to its economy. “It was such an occasion,” she said. “Of course, it was over thirty years ago. . . it’s funny the things you remember. FoV one concert, I had on a real silk dress. Well, a grasshopper jumped on me and I was afraid to grab him for fear he’d spit tobacco juice on my dress. I just let him be and by the end of the concert, he’d chewed a hole right through my dress.”
There were so many people that the concert’s organizers were running around looking for more chairs, apple crates, anything for folks to sit on. The orchestra alone was fifty-five pieces, and most of the musicians lived in the community for their month of concerts, so the town’s population was significantly increased and local social life affected.
Although everyone agreed that the summer series was a tremendous artistic and cultural success, Mrs. Davis said that the logistics were far too overwhelming to develop the Blue Ridge Music Festival into a summer musicians’ colony as originally planned.
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