Seattle Folklife Festival mandolin orchestra May 26

[Jess L.]

While perusing the 2018 Folklife Festival schedule, found a listing for "Seattle Mandolin Orchestra" - they're scheduled to play on Saturday, May 26, 2018, from 11:00am to 11:30am, in the Center Theater at Seattle Center (the part of town where the Space Needle is). I don't know anything about that orchestra but they do have a website and I found some YouTube videos of them playing which sound pretty good:


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Misc: Something I was unaware of until we were at Folklife again several years ago (hadn't been there in many years), is that whoever's in charge of the Seattle Center removed (apparently decades ago) some of the Seattle Center landmarks - including the very cool Bubbleator elevator (gone), all the carnival rides (gone), and the Flag Pavilion (gone). Surprised they didn't also demolish the Space Needle and the Fountain while they were at it. Barely recognized the place.

Despite the changes, we heard some cool music at Folklife. It was also a great place to people-watch, especially if you're from the hinterlands like us and not accustomed to seeing so much variety all in one place (haven't seen that many 'hippies' in one place since, like, ever!) - the crowds were often just as entertaining as the scheduled performers.

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For those who have never been to Folklife, here are some random videos to give a general idea of some of the different stuff that goes on there. To start with, there are different scheduled performers of varying experience/quality, apparently/mostly (?) different ones every year. I like this performance a lot - mandolin at 1:23 :


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Then there are buskers of various qualities - here are some buskers that have a resonator mandolin. And the usual drum circle stuff, not into it myself but it looks like fun. And contra dance (now that's a big dance floor! wow) to different types of music (good to see Folklife now allows electric instruments, don't know how long they've been doing that but I'm all for it, that's what a lot of the modern-day actual 'folk' play, so IMO there's nothing 'wrong' with it). They've even had belly dancers and various 'international' dances.

[Jess L.]

... Seattle Mandolin Orchestra ... Saturday, May 26 ...11:00am to 11:30am, in the Center Theater at Seattle Center ...

(bump)

That's today (Saturday May 26, 2018).

As it turns out, we're not doing Folklife this year (don't feel like driving that far and we have other stuff going on this weekend), but I wanted to remind other people who might be interested in hearing the mandolin orchestra's performance.