Summer weather and an open-air concert is a classic combination, so it should come as no shock that Lawrenceville’s Music in the Park series has returned for a 13th straight year.
Even a rainout on opening night couldn’t derail the momentum of the popular concert series, which is set to run every Thursday night in Weeden Park through August 29.
Each event will begin at 7 p.m., except the rescheduled final event of the summer, which will start at 6:30 p.m. and feature the Lawrence Community Concert Band.
“[The concert] was a big success the first time it was tried and we added a couple more concert evenings to fill it out and to test to see if it was going to be well supported by the community,” said Howard Nelson, president of Lawrenceville Main Street. “It turns out that people like to sit outside, eat dinner, have a few cold drinks and listen to great music from local artists.”
LMS has organized the Music in the Park series since 2001, when it began as a Fourth of July concert. After growing to four shows the next year, the series gradually progressed into the 10-week schedule that is in place today.
The events are built around established local musicians, mostly with ties to Lawrence, Ewing and West Windsor. LMS executive director Lindsey Bohra said this includes trying to spread this local mix across a varied musical taste.
“You don’t want to have all one genre of music,” Bohra said. “You want to make sure that you hit different things. Rock, country, whatever it is, we try to split it up so it’s not just one thing.”
Several bands are expected to be featured throughout August. On Aug. 1, Off The Map Band will perform its alternative-pop-rock fusion sound. The Riverside Bluegrass Band is set to take the stage Aug. 1, where the 5-piece acoustic string band will perform a combination of bluegrass music and bluegrass interpretations of classic pop and country songs. Aug. 15, the series is set to feature Reock and Roll Revue, whose music encompasses styles of the last 50 years. The Aldrich Brothers Band is set to play Aug. 22, ending with the Lawrence Community Band Aug. 29 to finish off the summer concert series.
Bohra said the Lawrence Township Community Foundation and Roma Bank are the primary sponsors of the events, as well as The Lawrenceville School. In addition, different local restaurants are also brought in to serve patrons of each individual concert.
“We allow [the restaurants] to come for free and sell their food, so it’s really like a picnic kind of atmosphere and it gets their word out,” Bohra said.
Years after the first concert event, the series still draws a consistently large crowd for almost every show. Nelson said the crowds can range from 150 to 350 people on a given night, depending on the weather.
“It really appeals to a large section of the population,” Bohra said. “You have people there from young families all the way to retirees. It’s a really interesting mix of people just enjoying music on a beautiful night.”
–Tom Smeaton
