Arts Festival ends with a weekend of live performances

Warwick - More than a few people in the audience admitted they were lucky to be living in Warwick. The seventh annual Warwick Summer Arts Festival, July 8-16, which had featured numerous music, theater, dance and art exhibits, closed with an entire weekend of free live performances at Stanley-Deming Park. On Friday evening, July 14, for example, about 500 residents and visitors enjoyed a lively concert featuring the award-winning all-female Irish-American group, Cherish the Ladies. The well-known recording artists, led by champion flute and tin whistle player Joanie Madden, have toured North and South America, the UK and Europe. Cherish the Ladies recently performed at the White House and has shared the stage with famous Irish singers and musicians including Tommy Makem, The Clancy Brothers and the Chieftains. During this, their first appearance in Warwick, the group also featured champion Irish step dancers and Celtic vocalist Heidi Talbot, a top recording artist from County Kildare, Ireland. The following evening, all that was missing at Stanley-Deming Park was a huge campfire. Many of those in the audience couldn’t resist leaving their chairs to dance to the Romanian Gypsy, Balkan and other Eastern European melodies played on the violins and other instruments of the Luminescent Orchestrii from Brooklyn, N.Y. The festival ended on Sunday with The Carpetbag Brigade Physical Theater, an acrobatic stilt ensemble based in Oakland, California. The company presented its repertory performance “Mudfire,” originally inspired by summer forest fires that had sweep through western states. Before introducing the weekend live performances, Elizabeth Reese, director of The Warwick Summer Arts Festival, thanked supporters including the New York State Council on the Arts, ShopRite of Warwick, Dressbarn, the Town and Village of Warwick, Provident Bank, the Warwick Savings Foundation, Orange and Rockland Utilities and WVT Communications among other contributors.