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Tunes for a warm summer night

Concert Series: Music in the Park started in 1979

MOLLY GILMORE; For The Olympian | • Published July 03, 2009

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Music in the Park is one of the South Sound’s summer parties, a weekly concert that invites dancing, picnicking, mixing and mingling – and, on Wednesday, eating birthday cake.

“It’s our 30th year,” said Vida Zvirzdys-Farler, event coordinator for the Olympia Downtown Association, which sponsors the concerts. “For our first concert, with Ocho Pies, we’re also going to celebrate the City of Olympia’s 150th birthday.”

The joint celebration is particularly fitting since the tradition of Music in the Park began with the city, which launched the summer concerts in 1979. In the years since, the musicians, schedules and sponsors have shifted, but the allure of a warm evening in the park with live entertainment hasn’t dimmed.

“Music in the Park is great,” said Michael Olson of Ocho Pies. “It brings out a really diverse cross-section of the Olympia community. There are people of all ages, and it’s a big open area so people can dance. It’s a very festive environment.

“I love it.”

Olson and his cohorts in the Afro-Cuban jazz quartet have performed numerous times for Music in the Park. A previous incarnation of the band, the 10-piece Obrador, last filled the park with sound in 2005, when it was the season opener.

“We wanted to start the season with a band that’s very lively and local,” Zvirzdys-Farler said.

In fact, Ocho Pies is a fixture at festivals from Seattle to Portland. The group was signed to Seattle’s Ponyboy Records and is at work on its second album, Olson said. Wednesday’s concert will be flavored by the project’s ingredients.

“We’re working on some new material, so we’ll be performing some new material,” Olson said. “We’ll be doing stuff from Haiti and from Cuba. The album will be a little more folkloric than the other album was.”

The music of Haiti, on the island of Hispaniola, has been a powerful influence on American music, he said. “There was a time when a lot of Haitians came to New Orleans, and they really influenced the music there. Haitian music influenced the music of the Southern United States, just as Cuban music has done, and it’s slowly trickled up here to the Northwest.”