A glossy, minute-long promo video for Guitar Under the Stars 2015 shows the allure of fleet-fingered musicians, crowds of dancers and a festival stage, with the Hartford skyline as its backdrop.
The event never happened.
“We raised most of the funds,” Daniel Salazar Jr., founder and artistic director, says. “At the last minute, the state also had some changes in the Commission of the Arts, which is now the Office of the Arts. We lost a major grant from them.”
This year, as part of Envisionfest Hartford, Salazar’s event returns as Guitar Under the Arts. It takes place at Burr Plaza, adjacent to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, on Saturday, Sept. 17. Admission is free.
In the early ’90s, Salazar was fresh out of a graduate program at the Hartt School. With a friend, he staged a guitar-centric event at a Hartford church. “We had this cool Spanish-themed music,” he says. “We got a lot of our friends together. A lot of people came. We said, ‘Wow, this is really something.’ People were thrilled.”
Guitar Under the Stars debuted as part of Riverfront Recapture in 1993. Musicians played on a portable stage, surrounded by generators. “That maybe wasn’t the best thing, but people enjoyed it.”
The first event, Salazar says, pulled in nearly 500 people. Soon, Guitar Under the Stars became one of Riverfront’s biggest draws, luring thousands of area residents with the promise of great music and community vibes. With grant money coming in, the event grew and grew.
The motivation, Salazar says, was “to have an event where anybody can come and enjoy good music and share in that with everyone else. That’s what it has always been about.”
But over the last couple of years, as funding waned, Guitar Under the Stars began to lose money. Riverfront Recapture couldn’t subsidize the event solely under its budget. City funding for police and sanitation services dried up.
“We were all set to go,” Salazar says of the 2015 cancellation. “[Riverfront] felt very badly, and of course I felt very badly.”
Salazar ran through situations in his brain. He met Jackie Gorsky Mandyck, iQuilt and Envisionfest’s managing director, and a new concept — Guitar Under the Arts — emerged.
“We have this great festival, Envisionfest, with so much happening,” Salazar says. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could move the event to Hartford and give it a different spin?”
Soon, the Roberts Foundation, an organization that gives out grants, was on board. “They’ve always loved my program because it brings so much to the community,” Salazar says. “They really wanted to do something as well.”
Burr Mall, adjacent to the Wadsworth Atheneum and the site of Alexander Calder’s metal “Stegosaurus” sculpture, offered the perfect outdoor site. Salazar, backed by the Virtuoso Chamber Orchestra, will perform under the sculpture at 6 p.m.
Guest artists include Puerto Rican guitarist Lorena Garay, flamenco/fusion guitarist Daniel Salazar III, Chilean multi-instrumentalist Gonzalo Cortes, Hartford-area percussionist Jocelyn Pleasant, Venezuelan keyboardist Abraham Chavez, violinist Ben Dean and soprano Jennifer Serplis.
“We’ve got so much happening in Hartford,” Salazar says. “We’ve got this amazing art around us all the time, and we don’t always stop to look at it. How many times do we pass the Stegosaurus?
Two additional guitarists, Keyla Mejia and Nick Cutroneo, will perform in the Wadsworth Atheneum, under specific works of art, beginning at 2:45 p.m.
“Hopefully this will bring people together to think, ‘Hey, man, this is awesome,'” Salazar says.
GUITAR UNDER THE ARTS takes place at Burr Plaza in Hartford on Saturday, Sept. 17, at 6 p.m. Additional performances take place inside the Wadsworth Atheneum at 2:45 p.m. and 3:45 p.m. Admission is free. danielsalazar.com/guitar-under-the-stars
