Check out my business profile article about Fluid Metal Works, Inc. on page 25 in the May 2011 edition of the Downtown Crowd...

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Check out my article about the 27th Annual Pensacola Crawfish Festival in the April/May 2011 edition of Pensacola Magazine on pages 10-11...  http://www.ballingerpublishing.com/files/PM_bc_AprilMayLow.pdf

 

Check out my articles in the March/April 2011 Home and Garden edition of Pensacola Magazine on pages 24-27... http://www.ballingerpublishing.com/files/PM_BC_MarchApril.pdf

 

Check out my business profile article in the April 2011 edition of Downtown Crowd (dtc) on page29... http://www.ballingerpublishing.com/files/DTC_April_2011_lr.pdf

Sausage festival links fun and food

By Shelley Austin

Published: Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Updated: Thursday, March 18, 2010 14:03

                                        Special to the Voyager

T. Tomlinson will perform

 With several fun rides, crafts, food and live entertainment by performers such as singer and songwriter Trent Tomlinson, families are sure to enjoy their time at the 24th annual Beulah Sausage Festival, March 19-21.     

 Beau Rodrique, the Beulahfest chairman, said the event started with an appreciation spaghetti dinner that the Beulah Volunteer Fire Department had for the community using left over money from a door-to-door collection  drive in 1985.  

 
The boot drive was how the fire department raised money to purchase fire fighting equipment before there were taxes to fund fire departments.

"After they got all they needed that year, they decided to give back the best way they could," Rodrique said.    

                                 Special to the Voyager

The event was formerly known as the Beulah Sausage Festival, and sausage is still the main food item that is served. Rodrique said that they cook about 6,400 pounds of Thompson's Cajun and Italian sausage over the entire weekend.     

"This is the first year that we changed the name just so we could kind of open ourselves up to possibly another avenue, entertainment-wise," he said. 

"For the last several years, we've had quite a few Nashville country artists – Taylor Swift, Darryl Worley, Craig Morgan and Tracy Byrd.  

"This year we have Charlie Daniels, Joe Diffie, Trent Tomlinson, and then we have several local acts, as far as our main headlines go," Rodrique said.

The festival will also include a 5K charity run, a motorcycle ride to benefit Sacred Heart's Miracle Camp and a firematics competition, in which area fire departments will compete for trophies.  

Aside from the many food vendors and live entertainment, rides furnished by James Gang Amusements will include a mechanical bull, as well as a rollercoaster ride. French fries, ice cream sundaes, elephant ears and other carnival foods will also be included, Rodrique said.

Rodrique said that all money raised from Beulahfest goes to local charities, organizations and towards the following year's festival. He said that no one is paid to help put the festival together.   

"Me, being the chairman, I'm not paid at all," he said. "This is 100 percent volunteer for me and for everybody else that's on our team."  

Funds raised from the event go toward organizations such as Sacred Heart Miracle Camp, WEAR's First Book of Pensacola, several local churches, ball fields and the Beulah Academy of Science.  

Beulahfest will be held at the Escambia County Equestrian Center located at 7750 Mobile Highway. Tickets are $5 Friday and $10 Saturday and Sunday. Prepaid weekender passes are $18, and the family fun pack is $60.

About 40,000 visitors are expected at the event, Rodrique said.      

   
"Every year we grow and grow and add more things and really try to put on a bigger and better festival," he said. "You certainly can't see the names that we bring in from Nashville for $5 and $10 by any means anywhere else."   

For more information about Beulahfest, visit www.beulahfest.com.   

http://www.thevoyager.net/entertainment/sausage-festival-links-fun-and-food-1.2194108

Festival blooms soon

By Shelley Austin

Staff Writer

Published: Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Updated: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 12:03

• 
  

The 10th annual Festival on the Green will be held March 26-27 at the University of West Florida's main campus. The hours will be noon to 5 p.m. on Friday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday.

It will be free and open to the public.

"The overall festival itself kicks off with the Honors Convocation, which is one of the venues for the festival," said Jeff Comeau, festival chairman and assistant director for the Office of Human Resources.

The convocation will be held in front of the John C. Pace Library entrance on Friday at 11 a.m. to recognize students, faculty and staff for academic excellence, leadership, teaching and service.

The festival will feature 20 venues, including outdoor food vendors, arts and crafts produced and sold by regional vendors and a juried show featuring paintings, jewelry and pottery.

There will also be a time portal to the past, which will show re-enactments from different periods in Pensacola's past. The portal to the past will include presentations and appearances by the UWF Archaeology Institute and West Florida Historic Preservation, Inc.

Comeau said that the festival started as a project of a UWF leadership development program. The campus LEAD class of 2000 put together a concept and presented it to the University president's cabinet, which accepted it enthusiastically, and the first festival was held in 2001, he said.

"We looked at some concepts that were put in place in the early ‘80s," Comeau said. "That was a very small version of the festival in which they had a little bit of music from one of the University bands and a small outdoor event."

Comeau said that the festival was not on the same scale of what it is now. "It didn't feature most of the things that we do now, with the exception of the art," he said.

This year, a new event featuring a time portal to the future will include tours of the new UWF School of Science and Engineering. A flight simulator will feature tactical wars and battles for a $5 fee.

In addition, Festival on the Green will include a tennis tournament featuring matches between men's and women's teams from UWF and Valdosta State, Delta State and other colleges. Also included will be a library book sale, dog agility show and a motorcycle show.

Various groups of motorcyclists will be coming in and giving some safety demonstrations, and then basically a motorcycle show to show people some of the latest and the greatest and older ones as well," Comeau said.
A children's festival, another venue, will be held on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

"It's got tons of events, and some of the things featured there are previews of summer programs that UWF offers young people in our region," Comeau said.

The children's festival will include games, activities, face paintings and appearances by Ronald McDonald and Uncle Sandy's MaCaws, a bird show that features exotic birds.

Comeau said that the festival will be spread out all over campus. "We'll have trolleys going around helping people get from one spot to the next," he said.

The festival will also feature off-the-green events such as the alumni award celebration at the Commons Conference Center, a jazz fest at the downtown Pensacola historic Seville Square, and a student art show at the UWF Center for Fine and Performing Arts.

"I'm thinking this is the best entertainment lineup that we've ever had," he said. For more information about the event, visit uwf.edu/festival or call 850-474-3000.
http://www.thevoyager.net/entertainment/festival-blooms-soon-1.2199928

JazzFest cues up soon

By Shelley Austin

Staff Writer

Published: Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Updated: Tuesday, April 6, 2010 14:04

This year, Pensacola's JazzFest, which attracts about 16,000 people annually, will include nationally known artists (such as Frank Sinatra's pianist of many years Russ Kassoff), and a performance by the Phillips Piano Jazz Competition winner.

The 27th annual JazzFest will be held April 10-11 at Seville Square. The hours will be Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Produced by the Jazz Society of Pensacola, JazzFest is an all-jazz event that is free and open to the public.

The funding for the festival also comes from corporate sponsorships and in-kind donations.

"We have some really top quality out-of- towners who are coming in," said Kathy Lyon, administrator for the Jazz Society of Pensacola, which sponsors the event.

The lineup will include Aaron Weinstein who was named a "rising star violinist" by "Downbeat Magazine,"
Loren Pickford, a Grammy-nominated saxophonist, flutist, pianist, vocalist, composer and recording artist, and Dennis Mackrel, a drummer who has performed with iconic musicians such as Quincy Jones.

Kathy Lyon will also perform a couple of jazz-blues blends from her CD on Saturday at 5 p.m. She said, "I'll be singing for an hour, so I'll be delivering the best songs I can do."

Local middle school, high school and college jazz bands will also perform on both days from 10 a.m. to about 1 p.m. They include the Ransom Middle School Jazz Band, Pine Forest High School Jazz Band, University of West Florida Jazz Band and Pensacola Junior College Jazz Band.

"It's just such a neat opportunity for these kids from middle school all the way to college to rub elbows and be able to connect and chat with these really famous guys who are top professionals," Lyon said. "It's a great mix, because there's all this inspiration and communication between all these different levels of people."
Lyon said that the musicians will be mingling with the crowd.

"At a lot of the jazz festivals, you never get close to the artists," she said. "Ours is kind of intimate, casual and relaxed."

Aside from jazz performances, JazzFest will also include food vendors and crafts exhibits featuring jewelry, paintings and photographs. At a jazz jam session for children starting at 3 p.m. on Saturday, kids will receive complimentary harmonicas and kazoos, and will be given basic music lessons.

In addition, the sixth-annual Phillips Jazz Piano Competition will coincide with JazzFest, and will be held April 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the Saenger Theatre. This event will also be free and open to the public.

Made possible by the generosity of Kathleen T. and Dr. Philip B. Phillips, the event is a nationally recognized jazz competition that gives jazz pianists the opportunity to showcase their skills. Contestants must be between the ages of 18 and 35 and enrolled in a jazz program in the United States.

"This year we received applications from 18 universities throughout the country from contestants who are then cut down through a preliminary judging process to five," said Kyle Marrero, interim vice president for university advancement.

The five finalists, who were chosen by a panel of UWF music professors were announced on March 25. They're from the University of Miami, William Patterson University, Columbia University, the University of Texas and the University of North Texas.

After the finalists perform their 20-minute sets, the judges deliberate, and the audience gets to choose an audience favorite. The judges will include Russ Kassoff and the 2008 Phillips Jazz Piano Competition winner, Donald Vega.

The first place winner will receive $5,000 and perform at JazzFest on Sunday at 1:10 p.m. The second place winner will receive $3,000, the third place winner will receive $1,500, and the fourth and fifth place winners will receive $250.

"Each year, the level of the competitors, and reach of the competition in terms of its national exposure, becomes greater and greater," Marrero said.

Lyon said that JazzFest audience survey results over the last couple of years showed that people from Mexico, Germany, and Japan attended.

She said, "There are a lot of great cultural events here, and we are glad to be one of the events that help to make Pensacola such a great vacation destination."
http://www.thevoyager.net/entertainment/jazzfest-cues-up-soon-1.2212822