newsminer.com

Todd Paris

If you’ve got an artistic itch, the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival is going to do its best to scratch it this month.

The annual festival, which attracts some of the country’s top teaching talent to Fairbanks each summer, will be held on July 13-27 at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The festival will offer more than 100 classes this year, including new courses in American roots music, filmmaking, scrapbooking, Native American choir, Irish music and guitar.

Registration is underway for the classes, with up-to-date information at the festival Web site, www.fsaf.org. People may also sign up for classes in person on July 13 at the UAF Great Hall.

Since she launched the festival in 1980, founder Jo Scott has seen it blossom into an eclectic, prestigious event. It started out as a music festival, but has grown to include a little bit of everything — dance, creative writing, visual arts, theater, and even ice skating are part of the lineup of classes.

“This is big-time stuff, and a lot of people don’t catch on that we have it,” Scott said.

About 800 students took festival classes last year, and it attracted instructors from around the country. Scott said Alaska summers help pull a variety of instructors to the festival, along with the appreciative students they find in Fairbanks.

This year’s lineup even includes a few instructors from Europe. Valentin Gregor, who is teaching several instrumental jazz classes, is traveling from Germany. Russell Ryan, a pianist and vocal coach, is coming to Fairbanks from Austria.

Dennis Stephens, a local Celtic musician who plays the shuttlepipes, bodhran and Irish whistle, said he was impressed to find festival classes last year by Sue Richards, a four-time U.S. National Scottish Harp Champion.

“You can go Outside at great expense and great inconvenience to take an Irish music class,” Stephens said, “but to take a class from someone of Sue Richards’ caliber here is an amazing opportunity.”

Scott tinkers with the festival formula each year. Classes that aren’t popular are dropped, while courses are added in subjects that are heavily requested. Scott said every one of the new classes this year is a result of comments from festival students.

Leonard Kamerling, the Curator of Film at the UA Museum of the North, will offer one of them — a two-week crash course in filmmaking. While internet video postings have fueled interest in the medium, he said education about it hasn’t necessarily kept up.

“People shoot films, but they don’t understand the craft,” Kamerling said. “What this class is going to try to do is teach the craft in a very condensed form.”

The festival also will offer opportunities for those who aren’t participating. The influx of musical talent means there will be a steady stream of concerts, many of them free to attend. Among them is a daily “lunch bites” show from 12:10-1:15 p.m., featuring a different music style each day.

In the past, the festival used to bring up headliners like Cab Calloway and Mel Torme to perform. As the lineup of instructors has grown, both in quality and quantity, that approach isn’t necessary anymore.

“Now we’re just loaded,” Scott said. “We don’t have any time for spotlight guests.”