(Photo | Courtesy of Newberry Event Music Festival)
Central Oregon’s Seventh Annual Newberry Event Music and Arts Festival to Defeat MS is a three-day outdoor summer multi-genre music festival well-known as a good time for a good cause. July 26-28, the 501c3 charity benefits the Oregon National Multiple Sclerosis Society. This year, the festival brings national touring acts from Sydney, Australia, Montana, Idaho, Maui and Brooklyn, New York as well as performers from Central Oregon, Eugene and Southern Oregon. Check the website for the 2019 lineup. The intimate festival feels like a private party. The festival just received Oregon’s Hidden Gem Festival Award from the state’s Oregon Festivals and Events Association, for “small but worthy events with under 1000 attendees that makes an impact on a community and is worth bragging about.”
Tal Wilkenfeld is promoting her new album on a Pacific Northwest tour. Love Remains suggests, as Tal says, “the abiding presence of love… or the remnants should it fail. The way to diminish darkness is by shining a light on it. That’s what’s so beautiful and rewarding about music.” This is fitting for the Newberry Event, whose theme is Music Heals. Thirty-two-year-old, award-winning Tal Wilkenfeld is an Australian-born bass and guitar phenom who has performed alongside artists including Jeff Beck, Prince, Eric Clapton, Herbie Hancock and Mick Jagger. With over 20 bands on two rotating stages, the lawns, shady aspens and pines of South Deschutes County create a beautiful outdoor concert venue. Hosted on rural residential acreage, DiamondStone Guest Lodge is 25 miles south of Bend, between Sunriver and La Pine. Enjoy awesome live music and dancing in the grass 10am-10pm. Tent camping is free and RV sites available. Kids under age 13 are free. With many vendors — great food (breakfast too), Sunriver Brewing Co. beers, Kombucha, ciders and distillery vendors, you’ll find everything you need for the day or weekend. Enjoy dancers, homemade arts and crafts, a silent auction and raffles of fine art and merchandise.