Wheatland Partnership Press Release

MEDIA CONTACT: Lindsay Allen, 989-774-7327                                         July 27, 2006

PROGRAM CONTACT: Scott Burgess, 989-774-2045

 

CMU, WHEATLAND FESTIVAL, VERIZON TEAM UP

TO PRESERVE, SHOWCASE MORE THAN 30 YEARS OF RECORDINGS

 

MOUNT PLEASANT — A new Central Michigan University partnership will be music to the ears of Wheatland Music Festival fans — literally.

 

White Pine Music, the recording label operated by CMU’s School of Music, is converting decades of concert recordings from the Remus-based festival to MP3 files and saving the files on compact discs. Already, more than 400 CDs have been filled with historic performances gleaned from a variety of audio formats.

 

“This is a huge undertaking,” said Wheatland Music Organization Vice President Tom Ball, who also leads the organization’s Performers’ Committee. “We see this preservation project as a vehicle to partner with CMU to create a new kind of historical document.”

 

Funded by grants from Verizon Communications, the CD archives eventually will be used in listening stations that will allow users to listen to hundreds of past Wheatland performances. Proposed sites for the stations include the Wheatland Music Organization office in Remus and CMU’s Clarke Historical Library.

 

The archive project is not the first collaboration between CMU and the Wheatland organization, nor will it be the last. In 2004, White Pine Music released its first CD, “At This Stage: 30 Years of Wheatland,” a 13-song disc of festival performances. Executive Producer Scott Burgess said the White Pine label expects to release additional Wheatland compilations once the archiving process is completed.

 

“Collaborations like this are only possible due to the sense of community that exists between the artists that have performed at Wheatland,” Ball said. “When we told them of our plans to document the festival, they offered their support across the board with limited exception.”

Created in 1974, the Wheatland Music Festival takes place the weekend after Labor Day each year, drawing 10,000 folk music fans to enjoy three days of music and art. Details about the festival are available online at http://www.wheatlandmusic.org.

For more information about White Pine Music and its releases, visit http://www.whitepinemusic.com.

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©2005 Wheatland Music Organization
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