Caramoor Hosts Second American Roots Music Festival

KATONAH, N.Y.– The Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts’ second American Roots Music Festival comes to Katonah on Saturday, featuring bluegrass, jazz, folk, gospel, soul, country and blues.

The all-day event takes place at five different locations on the premises of the grand country estate. Families can purchase an all-day pass for $25 per person (children under 16 are half price) and get access to an afternoon of shows at Friends Field, children’s games and a scavenger hunt, and all-acoustic concerts in the center’s Sunken Garden.

For $35 per person, guests can also stay for an evening performance that features Hot Tuna Acoustic and the David Bromberg Quartet in the Venetian Theater.

Festival Artistic Administrator Maggi Landau, who for the past six years has also curated Mad. Sq. Music, a roots music concert series at Madison Square Park, said she curated the show in collaboration with the Caramoor Center, which decided for the first time last year to put on a large multi-artist, multi-venue festival.

“This is an idea that we came up with together that is very different from the way that Caramoor has presented shows in the past,” Landau said.

The Walkabout Clearwater Chorus, founded by 25 years ago by legendary folk singer Pete Seeger, will serenade guests in the morning as they enter the parking lot for the festival, which begins at noon.

Music by the likes of Eilen Jewell, Red Molly, Roosevelt Dime, Old Man Luedecke and Spuyten Duyvi will go on throughout the day.

At 6 p.m., there's an old-time music session, a “low key interactive workshop” in which guests are invited to join some of the day’s performers to explore the work of different legendary musicians and sing along to their songs.

Landau said that, looking at the audience makeup of any roots music festival, there is always “a full generational span.”

“It’s just really special to see that kind of an event where everybody in multiple generations can be entertained by and interested in the same musical genre,” she said.

Landau said the roots festival is especially accessible and welcoming to all ages because of the makeup of the space itself. Kids can run around on the lawn while adults relax under a tree with a gourmet picnic, and grandma and grandpa slow dance under the stars.

Landau said the center is expecting the festival to sell out, so she advises people to visit Caramoor’s website and buy their tickets now.

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