Just like the Mississippi River, beautiful music flows abundantly throughout Natchez each year for the month of May with wonderfully talented artists coming to Natchez to fill our churches, our homes, our restaurants and many of our historical sites with many different styles of music, stage performances, instrumental and vocal concerts/recitals — all sponsored by The Natchez Festival of Music.

This year marks the 22nd season for our festival, and already we have reached more than 10,000 children with the performance of “Mozart’s Three Little Pigs” just a week ago this April.

At 7 p.m. Saturday, everyone is encouraged to attend our first event of this season that will be performed at The First Presbyterian Church — “Swingin’ Blues” — An Evening with the World Famous University of North Texas One O’clock Lab Band.

Sunday afternoon, one will not want to miss “A Hungarian Rhapsody” featuring Jonathan Levin as Franz Liszt performed at Trinity Episcopal Church at 4 p.m. Jonathan will take you on an incredible journey back in time, where you will discover what it was like to attend a concert by one of the greatest performers in history.

Each weekend, through May 26, there will be all flavors of main stage and plantation performances scheduled that will delight and entertain everyone’s musical taste. So please bring your friends and family to experience the magnificent music presented by the Natchez Festival of Music.

To see a list of all of the events, the dates, the locations and the ticket cost for each event, please either go to our website, www.natchezfestivalofmusic.com, or pick up a brochure at the Natchez Pilgrimage Tour Headquarters or the Natchez Visitor Reception Center down by the Mississippi River Bridge. Brochures are also available through-out the downtown merchants and hotels.

Advance tickets can also be purchased by calling 601-445-2210, and all tickets can be purchased at the door except for May 18 and May 25, due to limited amount of space. This year, the festival is offering a student ticket price for $10 to many of the events.

At 4 p.m. May 12, there will be “Dancing in the Park,” a concert presented by the Natchez High School Show Choir and the Robert Lewis Middle School Choir.

Admission is free and the show will include tunes such as “Footloose,” “A Michael Jackson Tribute Medley” and other “80s” dance music.

Please bring your family and friends, and join in the fun on this date.

As chairman, I wish to thank everyone in the Miss-Lou for supporting the Natchez Music Festival in so many ways — volunteering, attending, purchasing tickets, making contributions, cleaning up, hauling, setting-up, taking-down, hosting, cooking and traveling, and the list goes on and on.

You are truly a kind, caring, loving, supporting and unique community, and I am honored and humbled to have been asked to serve our community in this capacity.

Listen and enjoy the music for the next three weeks flowing freely for all to hear and see!

 

Mary Lessley is the 2012 chairman of the Natchez Festival of Music.