RutlandHerald.com - We Are Vermont

All bang, no bucks

The empty-pocket guide to the Burlington International Waterfront Festival

Want to dive into this summer's Burlington International Waterfront Festival without sinking $1,000 into a VIP pass for headliner Tony Bennett and 150 other programs and performances?

We can relate. So we scanned its July 2-14 schedule for the password: Free.

Organizers of the nearly $2 million festival are aiming to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Frenchman Samuel de Champlain's arrival on his namesake lake with 13 days of entertainment on indoor and outdoor stages throughout the city.

Tickets to a French "theater spectacle" featuring Charlie Chaplin's granddaughter start at $15, while those for homegrown rockers Grace Potter and the Nocturnals begin at $30. (Bennett's non-VIP tickets are expected to be sold out by the time you read this.) So how does a stimulus-starved Vermonter partake without facing credit-card debt for the next four centuries?

Champlain celebrants, spend a few minutes exploring your options.


Iroquois lacrosse?

The festival starts Thursday with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Hackett Fischer, whose new book "Champlain's Dream" is considered the definitive biography of the French explorer, speaking at 4 p.m. at the Champlain College gymnasium on South Willard Street. (Free tickets are available at the FlynnTix Box Office on Main Street.)

Scholars aren't your scene? Check out the American Indian displays, demonstrations, drumming and dancing at the Vermont Indigenous Celebration Signature Event taking place throughout the day July 9 to 12 inside and in back of ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center at the Leahy Center for Lake Champlain on College Street.

Sports fans, for their part, can catch an Iroquois lacrosse clinic (the tribe invented the sport) July 10 at 3 p.m. or July 11 at 1 p.m. at Burlington High School's field hockey field off Institute Road.


Hit it, Maestro!

While many of the festival's concerts require tickets — for example, The Roots, NBC's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" house band — plenty of performances are free.

Friday, The Horse Flies fiddle band will bring its "rubbery art-rock sound that suggests Civil War music as interpreted by Talking Heads" (or so says The Boston Globe) to Battery Park in a double bill with the Quebec gypsy jazz trio The Lost Fingers at 6:30 p.m.

(That same day, the Burlington Concert Band will play marches and show tunes on Church Street at 6 p.m., and what's billed as Burlington's largest-ever fireworks show will explode along the waterfront at 9:30 p.m.)

City Hall Park — between College, Main and St. Paul streets — will host a free stage throughout the festival, with performers including:

-- Saturday: Country artists Susannah Blachly at 2:30 p.m., Rick & the Ramblers at 4:30 p.m., Banjo Dan & the Mid-nite Plowboys at 6:30 p.m. and Myra Flynn at 8:30 p.m.

-- July 5: Physical comedian Tom Murphy at 11:30 a.m., and Vermont singers Mia Adams at 1 p.m., Jen Crowell at 2:30 p.m., Steve Hartmann at 4 p.m., Clayton Sabine at 5:30 p.m. and Gregory Douglass at 7 p.m.

-- July 8: Franco-American artists Michèle Choinière at noon, Va-et-Vient at 1:30 p.m., Trio Gusto at 3 p.m. and Beaudoin Legacy at 4:30 p.m.

-- July 9: Blues musicians Seth Yacovone at 11 a.m., Blues for Breakfast at 12:30 p.m., Lowell Thompson at 2:30 p.m., Jenni Johnson at 3:30 p.m., Jamie Masefield at 5 p.m. and Blues & Lasers at 6:30 p.m.

-- July 10: Vermont youth folk group Fiddleheads at noon, Quebec Inuit singer-songwriter Elisapie Isaac at 1:30 p.m. and a cappella group Les Charbonniers de l'Enfer (Coal Miners from Hell) at 3 p.m.

-- July 11: Vermont performers Alan Greenleaf at 2:30 p.m. and The Clayfoot Strutters at 4 p.m.

-- July 12: Vermont performers Tympanon at 11 a.m., folk duo Crossing North at 12:30 p.m., Scott Ainslie at 2 p.m., Tammy Fletcher at 3:30 p.m. and the jazz-blues band Kilimanjaro at 5 p.m.


Wait, there's more

For more music, a stage at Burlington's Waterfront Park at the west end of College Street will host:

-- July 10: Quebec folk-rock group Les Cowboys Fringants (Frisky Cowboys) and Juno Award-winning Quebec folk group Le Vent du Nord at 7:30 p.m.

-- July 11: The blues-funk group Gary Farmer and the Troublemakers and Grammy award-winning Iroquois singer-songwriter Joanne Shenandoah at noon.

Church Street Marketplace will feature:

-- July 10: Quebec City marching band Fanfarniente della Strada and fellow Franco street performers Ensemble Karel and Toxique Trottoir from noon to 5 p.m.

-- July 11: Franco performers Ensemble Karel, Fanfarniente della Strada and Toxique Trottoir from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

And a separate Church Street stage near the intersection with Pearl Street will see:

-- July 11: The folk groups Le Vent du Nord at 11:30 p.m., Atlantic Crossing at 2:30 p.m. and Willard Way at 4:30 p.m.

-- July 12: Comedic entertainers Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, Freaks & Fools and the Hokum Brothers from noon to 3 p.m.


Just for kids

The City Hall Park stage — again, between College, Main and St. Paul streets — will welcome two days of family-friendly performers:

-- July 6: Storyteller Tim Jennings at 10 a.m., Kamikaze Comedy at 11 a.m., singer Jon Gailmor at 1 p.m., clown Brent McCoy at 2 p.m., and New England Youth Theatre at 3:30 and 5:30 p.m.

-- July 7: Storyteller Peter Burns at 10:30 a.m., and singers Marty Morrissey at 11:30 a.m., Jon Gailmor at 12:30 p.m., Chloe Brisson at 2:30 p.m., Twist of the Wrist at 4 p.m., Erin Bentlage at 5:30 p.m. and Keeghan Nolan at 7 p.m.

Also July 6 and 7, the Charlotte-based Very Merry Theatre will perform on the Waterfront Park stage at 5 p.m.


Forward, march!

A sidewalk spot anywhere on Main Street from Union Street to South Champlain Street is all you'll need to take in the Champlain 400 Parade on July 11 from 5 to 7:30 p.m.

The procession, themed "From First Encounter … to the Future," promises marching bands, antique cars and hundreds of dancers, musicians, actors, clowns, puppeteers and stilt walkers.

The parade will end with a "grand finale" at Union Station (at the west end of Main Street) at 7:30 p.m. After, entertainment on Church Street and in City Hall Park will include the Seth Warner Mount Independence Fife & Drum Corps, the Burlington Taiko Japanese festival drummers, the Jeh Kulu West African dance troupe and the Mango Jam New Orleans blues-funk band.


Eat up

A Taste of Champlain Food Festival from July 8 to 12 will showcase Vermont producers, chefs and culinary experts, as well as French, Quebec and American Indian dishes.

July 8, a Vermont-France exchange event from 9 a.m. to noon at the Firehouse Center for the Visual Arts on Church Street will feature samples and speakers including cheese expert and microbiologist Sister Noella Marcellino (subject of the PBS documentary "The Cheese Nun"), French sensory expert Florence Berodier and professors Amy Trubek of the University of Vermont and Pierre Merel of the University of California.

A Specialty Foods Fair at City Hall Park on July 11 will serve samples of Vermont products from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

July 12, Burlington's Intervale Center at 180 Intervale Road will offer tours of its new Abenaki Traditional Garden, a "wheat to bread" demonstration and archaeologist Charlie Paquin cooking in replicas of prehistoric ceramic pots from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.


Lights, camera …

City Hall Park will host a series of free outdoor films at 8:30 p.m.:

-- July 5: French animated feature "The Triplets of Belleville"

-- July 6: French film "Playtime"

-- July 7: Jean Cocteau's French film "Beauty and the Beast"

-- July 8: Vermont documentary "The World in Claire's Classroom"

-- July 9: Samuel de Champlain drama "Black Robe"

-- July 10: Quebec murder mystery "Bon Cop, Bad Cop"

-- July 12: French film "Girl on the Bridge"


Dancing with …

On July 10 and 11, French-Algerian choreographer Heddy Maalem and dozens of dancers will present "From the New World," a specially commissioned piece inspired by Champlain's 1609 expedition and Dvorak's Ninth Symphony. (The 8:30 p.m. show at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts on Main Street requires free tickets available at festival headquarters at 90 Church St.)

July 11, local dancer-choreographer Selene Coburn will present "Unison," billed as "an improvisational investigation of the properties of water and the systems we use to arrive at future scenarios." The event, in which performers will end up swimming in Lake Champlain, starts at 1 p.m. outside ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center on College Street.


You gotta have art

Burlington City Arts will hold a Fine Art Fair under giant tents on the south lawns of Waterfront Park.

People can peruse paintings, drawings, prints, photography and sculpture July 10 from noon to 8 p.m., July 11 from noon to 10 p.m. and July 12 from noon to 6 p.m.


What's next?

The Vermont Lake Champlain Quadricentennial Commission will present a series of "Forums on the Future" at noon at Burlington City Hall's Contois Auditorium on Church Street. Panel discussions will spotlight various topics and guests, including:

-- July 6: "Creating and Utilizing Visions of the Future" with former Gov. Madeleine Kunin, State Archivist Gregory Sanford, Council on the Future of Vermont leader Paul Costello and entrepreneur Bill Schubart.

-- July 7: "Writers' Visions of 2050"

-- July 8: "The Future of Food in Vermont" with representatives from the state Agriculture Agency, Vermont Fresh Network and other area food organizations.

-- July 9: "Artists Envisioning Our Future"

-- July 10: "How the Past Informs the Future or Visionaries Debate" with Vermont experts in law, history, psychology, business and technology.

-- July 11: "The Future of Diverse Communities in Vermont"


One last thing

Still want to see a ticketed show? Organizers are seeking volunteers to assist at programs and performances. People who donate at least four hours will receive a T-shirt, poster and ticket to one of the major waterfront concerts. For more information, contact volunteer coordinator Linsey Foster-Mason at (802) 863-4979.