On Feb 6, 2021, the new team at RoSfest inc. announced the return of the popular art-rock and progressive music festival; RoSfest. So in just under a month, we return with another surprise. We are beyond excited to announce that the 17th edition of RoSfest is returning to the Sarasota Opera House in beautiful Sarasota, Florida and as a special treat, we have created a small 30-second presentation.
Enjoy! John, Nick, Tony, Lisa, Octavia, and Rebecca.
When RoSfest founder George Roldan approached me to consider taking on the task of leading RoSfest into a new era, I was deeply humbled and excited. I had been both a long-time patron of the festival and a core benefactor since the reorganization as a non-profit charitable organization dedicated to enhancing people’s lives through access to great music and the support of musicians. As a musician, scientist, and entrepreneur, I hope to utilize my skill set to both maintain the incredible tradition and quality of RoSfest and to lead the organization to greater future glories. The Board that we have organized represents a wonderful group of highly experienced, talented, dedicated, and selfless individuals whose only desire is to see RoSfest continue and grow. We will be expanding our search for charitable contributions and will aggressively seek grant monies to provide a stable financial foundation for future performances. RoSfest is reborn and music lovers everywhere will benefit. John Blangero (Sun King Rising, Harlequin Reborn)
Nick:
I’m thrilled to say the future of RoSfest looks bright, some may call this the rebirth of one of the top music festivals in the USA if not the world. I would call this the next step in the evolution of greatness we hope to continue to build on the time-honored traditions laid out by our dear friend and founder George Roldan, as well as his wife Beth and the RoSfest staff. I am part of what I would consider an elite team of musicians and music industry professionals who are not only my colleagues but friends sharing one vision; to continue to grow a festival that is as much about the people who attend as it is the musicians who pour their heart and soul into their art. Anyone who is familiar with me knows that I am passionate about music and dedicated to the people that create and support it. It will be my privilege to respect what RoSfest is and will continue to become, and what it means to those who embrace it. We will continue to bring you the same quality festival that you’ve all come to expect, love, and enjoy over the past 17 years. Nick Katona (Melodic Revolution Records, PeacockSunrise Records, Power of Prog, ReZonatZ)
Rebecca:
I am so out of this world excited to be a part of this team for RoSfest. So it seems only fitting to honor the past, the present, and the future of this amazing festival, with this opening… “Prog, the final frontier. These are the voyages of team RoSfest, the Musicians, and Prog Fans everywhere. Our mission is to explore new Prog Bands, to seek out new Prog music, and to boldly go where no Prog has gone before!” Rebecca Avelar (MRR Music Group)
Octavia:
So, RoSFest lives to see another day and I get to be a part of making those days happen. It’s going to be a pretty steep path and an arduous task to take over from where George left off; one need only consider the fact that it’s taking 6 of us to even attempt to do what he did almost single-handedly (not forgetting the help of his wonderful wife, Beth, and support from his Crew). But keeping the RoSFest torch burning is something we all feel ardently about and we will do our very best to keep bringing you a quality event and occasion to momentarily be part of something which goes beyond our common love of music. The RoSFest 6 are a dedicated and close-knit team that will be putting their very different and individual skills together to ensure RoSFest continues for many years to come. We look forward to seeing many old and new faces along the way! As the French might say, Le festival est mort, Vive le festival! Octavia Brown (2Days of Prog+ 1, RoSfest)
Lisa :
In this post-Covid world, where the live music scene has been hit hard due to global lockdowns, very few festivals have escaped unscathed. Fortunately, with the help of a base of loyal devotees and a vision to the future by founder George Roldan, RoSfest will get a chance to rise from the ashes of the wreckage, and return to the standard of excellence people expect from one of the world’s most beloved progressive music festivals. I am honored to join such a devoted team of creative friends, each bringing a unique experience to the table in order to meet the new challenges that we face as concert events gradually reopen. It is a new era for RoSfest, and an exciting future awaits. Following George’s fearless example, let the tradition continue! Lisa Wetton (Edison’s Children, United Progressive Fraternity)
Tony:
As the new Board member on the ground in Sarasota, I will be responsible for a lot of the day-to-day local legwork that is required throughout the year to organize and run a successful festival. My background in entertainment management and business will come in handy! I have always loved attending RoSfest and helping musicians achieve their dreams. I am honored and excited to be working with the excellent people here, and I am thrilled to be part of the ROSfest future! Tony Anzalone (Music Manager Sun King Rising, Harlequin Reborn)
RoSfest (The Rites of Spring Festival) made its debut in 2004 at the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania until 2007, and then moved to the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, Pennsylvania for 2008 and 2009. In 2010, the festival moved to the Majestic Theater in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and in 2019, the festival moved to its current location at the Sarasota Opera House in Sarasota, Florida.
2019, the festival moved to the Sarasota Opera House in Sarasota, Florida. The festival is known for importing some fantastic talent from around the world including Flor de Loto (PE), Anglagård (Sweden), Spock’s Beard (US), Riverside (Poland) IQ (UK), Magic Pie (Norway), Unified Past (US), Pain of Salvation (Sweden), Lazuli (France), RPWL (Germany), Ambrosia (US), Kinetic Element (US), The Flower Kings (Sweden), Evership (US), among others.
December 26, 2020, George Roldan announced on the official RoSfest Facebook page that; “The Rites of Spring Festival says “Goodbye, for now,” the COVID -19 pandemic had made continuing the festival unsustainable. However, on February 1, 2021, George Roldan posted another announcement stating that RoSfest would continue under new management. New event dates have yet to be announced.
ProgStock Festival, the American Northeast’s Only International Progressive Rock Festival, is proud to bring you the ProgStock Presents Virtual Series.
The pandemic has closed music venues and brought in-person live music performances to a screeching halt. Accordingly, we have had to cancel ProgStock 2020. We don’t know how long we will have to wait before it will be truly safe to stage a festival, but we will be back! Meanwhile, we will be bringing music right to you with some great shows from artists performing live in their homes or home studios. The series is being presented every Saturday night, 5PM – 10PM US Eastern and started on August 1, 2020.
The individual performances on StageIt are separate shows. Audience members will purchase a ticket to each performance individually, not the whole night as a block. Some shows will be 45 minutes and others will be 90 (or longer), so we may have as few as three shows or as many as six each night, with some nights starting at 4PM US Eastern to accommodate artists streaming from Europe.
Shows in October feature District 97, Pinnacle, OVRFWRD, Marco Machera (Echotest), Galactic Cowboy Orchestra, Katie Pachnos, Alan Hewitt and One Nation, and more!
On October 10th and 11th, 2020, ProgStock is taking its Virtual Series to the next level by bringing you Virtual ProgStock 2020. ProgStock, the American Northeast’s only international progressive rock festival, will come to you virtually with full-production, full-band performances streamed live from the Hamilton Stage Theatre of the Union County Performing Arts Center in Rahway, New Jersey on October 10th, and from the Temple Stage at Tellus360 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on October 11th and will feature Total Mass Retain YES Tribute Band, Solar Federation – A Rush Tribute, Mile Marker Zero, Cell15, Gnarbot, and Crack the Sky!
Show times (all times are in US Eastern): Saturday, October 10: 1PM: Total Mass Retain – A Yes Tribute 4:30PM: Mile Marker Zero 8PM: Gnarbot
Sunday, October 11: 1PM: Solar Federation – A Rush Tribute 4:30PM: Cell15 8PM: Crack The Sky
StageIt is all about experiencing music in the moment, duplicating the live music experience as closely as possible. You have to be there to see it, just like you would in a venue, so shows are only available on their site during the performance window.
ProgStock Festival, the American Northeast’s Only International Progressive Rock Festival, is proud to bring you the ProgStock Presents Virtual Series.
The pandemic has closed music venues and brought in-person live music performances to a screeching halt. We don’t know how long we will have to wait before it will be truly safe to stage a festival, but we will be back! Meanwhile, we will be bringing music right to you with some great shows from artists performing live in their homes or home studios. The series will be presented every Saturday night, 5PM – 10PM US Eastern, starting on August 1, 2020, followed by Gagliarchives Radio Philadelphia on the HOUSE of PROG – Music Page. Some Saturdays we will start one hour early at 4PM to accommodate artists live streaming from Europe.
The individual performances on StageIt are separate shows. Audience members will purchase a ticket to each performance individually, not the whole night as a block. Some shows will be 45 minutes and others will be 90, so we may have as few as 3 shows or as many as 6 on each Saturday night.
StageIt is all about experiencing music in the moment, duplicating the live music experience as closely as possible. You have to be there to see it, just like you would in a venue, so shows are only available on their site during the performance window. Some of our artists may choose to capture their shows and make them available later on some other service (YouTube, Facebook) and we (ProgStock) may even capture some of the shows, with artist permission, of course, but the shows will not be available on StageIt outside the show window.
Details for StageIt: Shows will be presented on StageIt. To participate, you must have a StageIt account. If you don’t yet have an account, here’s what to do:
Go to stageit.com (on a laptop or desktop, the site is not mobile-friendly for opening accounts, purchasing Notes/tickets, but works on mobile for viewing)
Click Sign Up (upper right corner)
Create a username and password
Click “Buy Notes” (10 notes = $1) – The StageIt system sells Notes in minimum intervals of $5 (50 Notes).
After choosing how many Notes you want to purchase, choose your payment type – it’ll be credit card or PayPal (with PayPal, you do not need to have an account, you can use a credit/debit card as a guest).
You will also be able to tip the artists before, during and after the shows with Notes. Consider loading up your account now, so you can have some fun with tipping while supporting your favorite artists. Tips show up on the screen as colored bars and many artists view them as the alternative to applause!
Pricing: Starting in September, 45-minute shows will have a minimum ticket price of $4.00 (40 Notes) and 90-minutes shows will have a minimum ticket price of $8.00 (80 Notes), with prices in US Dollars. You can pay more, if you have the means, and you will also be able to tip during the show with your StageIt Notes. We encourage you to support the artists at this difficult time.
Show Archive: Saturday, August 1: 5PM: Peter Jones of Tiger Moth Tales (45 minutes) 6PM: Julie Slick – Bassfest (90 minutes) 8PM: Rachel Flowers (90 minutes)
Saturday, August 8: 4PM: Markus Reuter of Stick Men (45 minutes) 5PM: Jean Pageau of Mystery (45 minutes) 6PM: Jimmy Keegan of Pattern-Seeking Animals (45 minutes) 7PM: Paul Bielatowicz of Carl Palmer Band (45 minutes) 8PM: Dennis Atlas of Initiator and Arch Allies (90 minutes)
Frogbelly and Symphony has been postponed to September 12 at 6PM 6PM: Gabriel Agudo (45 minutes) 7PM: André Cholmondeley of Project/Object (45 minutes) 8PM: Bob Richardson of Cell15 (90 minutes)
ProgDay is happy to announce that we are currently pulling together a virtual event for this year. The idea is to present streaming performances from 4 artists a day over the Saturday and Sunday of the originally scheduled ProgDay weekend (September 5 and 6). Once the lineup and scheduling are worked out, details and instructions will be posted on the ProgDay website.
Virtual ProgDay 2020 is being greatly facilitated by Tom Palmieri and Ann Rinaldi of ProgStock (http://www.progstock.com/2020/). On Saturday, August 1, ProgStock kicked off the ProgStock Presents Virtual Series, a series of weekly shows streamed online through StageIt.com. After reading of ProgDay’s cancellation, Tom and Ann reached out to ProgDay and invited us to partner with them for our virtual event. The result is that Virtual ProgDay 2020 will be presented on Labor Day weekend as part of the ProgStock Presents Virtual Series.
Please note that ProgStock is not getting anything for this. All funds that are raised will go to ProgDay and the artists that perform.
Thank you Tom and Ann!
We are also excited to announce that ProgDay is now a tax-exempt non-profit event.
In 2017, Musical Arts Progressive Society, Inc. (MAPS), was formed. MAPS is a non-profit organization that advocates for, educates about, and promotes national and international musical artists creating progressive and innovative music. MAPS recently received its confirmation as a 501(c)(3) company. Donations to MAPS / ProgDay are now tax-deductible.
Virtual ProgDay 2020 Performances
Once it was decided that the physical ProgDay event would not happen, the decision to try to have a virtual event was born from the desire to have ProgDay continue in some form this year and to provide our regular audience with an experience that would be fun, entertaining and worth their while. So we set out to present a series of performances that would be streamed live, as they were happening. The challenge we faced in doing this was the combination of the short time frame in which to contact bands and for them to arrange a concert, as well as the really tough job of each band not only finding a viable performance space, but also having the ability for all of the band members to gather and play at the particular time they were to perform over ProgDay weekend.
Ultimately, between the various situations created by the pandemic in various countries, the technical requirements of ensured streaming and the lack of time for producing the event, it was just not possible for many of the bands to pull off a live-in-the-moment broadcast.
The result is that Virtual ProgDay 2020 will offer truly live performances combined with pre-recorded shows done especially for ProgDay. In the case of pre-recorded shows, the concert you will see will be a performance that has been played and recorded especially for the ProgDay audience and has never been seen anywhere before. The prerecorded shows represent a huge amount of effort on the part of the participating bands to get their music in front of you. During prerecorded shows, we will speak live with band members that will be present during the broadcast.
Once again ProgDay has assembled a group of bands that we think are worthy of your attention. While we know that many of you are already familiar with some of these bands, we also know that few of you will know all of the bands. To encourage our audience to check out all of the performers over the weekend, we have set ticket prices at $6 for all shows. We hope this economical price will allow everyone that is interested to experience all of the music. We also hope that those who are in a position to contribute more will show their appreciation to the artists by tipping additional money during the performances.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The start times shown for each performance are Eastern Daylight Time, the current time zone for the east coast of the US.
Stay tuned… There are three more confirmed bands to be announced.
Seasoned musicians from Austin’s progressive and experimental music scenes mixing influences ranging from Henry Cow, Cardiacs, Haniwa-Chan and Picchio Dal Pozzo, to traditional music from Eastern Europe and South Asia.
This concert has been performed live and recorded especially for ProgDay.
Elements of Space Rock, Psychedelia, Kosmisches Musik, Symphonic Rock and ethnic influences are morphed, mutated and blended into music that varies from one album to the next, but is always singularly Vespero.
This concert has been performed live and recorded especially for ProgDay.
To purchase a ticket for this show, use this link: Vespero ticket
As the band says, “Santana loved Miles. Magma loved Coltrane. Soft Machine loved pop. Pink Floyd loved Soft Machine. Weather Report loved African grooves. The Italian progressive bands loved classical music. Return to Forever loved Brazilian stuff. Frank Zappa loved Black Sabbath. Hooffoot love them all. Forget about labels like rock, jazz, progressive and kraut…”
This concert has been performed live and recorded especially for ProgDay.
To purchase a ticket for this show, use this link: Hooffoot ticket
A cross-genre combination of Symphonic Rock, Fusion, RPI and more, cohesively combined into music that has evolved over the years into an eclectic mix that is uniquely MAD FELLAZ.
This performance will be streamed live from a venue in Italy.
To purchase a ticket for this show, use this link: Mad Fellaz ticket
Union County Performing Arts Center (UCPAC.org) will be participating in the UnCancelled Music Festival (uncancelledmusicfestival.com). This is the venue in Rahway, New Jersey, that brings you the ProgStock Festival (ProgStock.com) every October.
Now UCPAC is bringing music right into your home, during this crazy time of isolation, by way of the UnCancelled Music Festival. UCPAC is hosting a virtual stage for the festival and bringing you some great shows from artists performing live in their homes or home studios. Ann Rinaldi (ACR Management) from ProgStock Festival is curating the talent for the stage.
The artists and venues will receive a portion of the proceeds to help keep them going during this unprecedented crisis. And a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Recording Academy’s emergency financial assistance program, MusiCares – which provides critical funds to music people struggling with financial, medical or personal crises. Any affected music professional who has lost work during this crisis can apply to receive emergency funding. It is important to all of us during this challenging time that no musician or music venue goes bankrupt.
The first night of shows on the UCPAC virtual stage is this Saturday, April 4 starting at 5 PM Eastern US time, which will be topped off at 8 PM Eastern US time by Harry Waters, son of Roger Waters of Pink Floyd.
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