Time for the cliché good news-bad news thing.
The good news is that we have a full multi-track virtual festival ready to go, with acts from around the country (plus the UK) and some local favorites, a chantey sing, a hymn sing, and an after-hours pub sing.
The bad news is that with the recent surge in COVID-19 cases, we are not planning any in-person events (but see below). Singing is a high-risk activity; even with a carefully-managed event as we were planning, the risks seemed too high to our performers and audience. It also appeared that the potential risk to our volunteers would make it difficult to staff such an event.
We are still participating in the Gratitude Festival run by The Music Hall. On the Vaughan Mall stage in downtown Portsmouth. Live/in-person PMFF acts will be appearing 2:30–3:30 and 5–6:30 on Saturday. See https://www.themusichall.org/landing-pages/events-landing/gratitude-music-festival/ for the latest updates on the Gratitude Festival.
So please join us on the last weekend in September, the 25th and 26th, to hear headliners Larry Kaplan, Ron and Natalie Daise, and A.J. Wright, plus Bounding Main, Lynz Morahn, The Portermen, Edith & Bennett, David Littlefield and Geoff Kaufman of Different Tack, and more! See performer bios at https://pmffest.org/2021-performers/.
If you missed our preview event last month, you can still catch it on YouTube at https://youtu.be/ysm6h-oP7z8, and please join us for our next virtual chantey sing – always on the second-Saturday of the month, 3–5 pm EDT. The details, as always, are here on this Web site.
And remember, the festival is free and registration is not required. We will post links to the various Zoom and Youtube sessions a few days ahead of the festival. We also have an e-mail list which you can get on if you want to be updated with festival plans and happenings! Just drop us an email info@pmffest.org asking to get on the list.
As we said in our e-mail to the performers: As much as it hurts to know we can’t safely raise the rafters in the same place yet, we’ve tried to carry on as much as possible of the PMFF structure we love. We hope you can join us, and we are really looking forward to singing with you all in person next year.
Keep singing & stay healthy,
The PMFF Board