Soundcheck Art & Music Festival

Soundcheck is a wintertime weekend of participatory, artist-driven events and experiences that highlight Port Townsend’s rich creative spirit.

Welcome to the Youth Reporting Lab! From the beginning, The Beacon wanted to help ignite a passion for reporting in the next generation of potential journalists. Soundcheck has given us the opportunity to work with three talented young people who will document all the happenings this year through video, photography, and interviews. We are delighted to welcome Ave Arroyo, CJ Fisher and Ben Shafer to the Youth Reporting Lab! They will be covering Soundcheck alongside veteran arts reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz and Editor Nhatt Nichols. If you see our booth at Soundcheck, come say hi!

The Latest From Soundcheck:

Published Sunday, March 1, at 3:36 p.m. by Diane Urbani de la Paz

When you get right down to it, art feels good. 

That point was proven this weekend at the Soundcheck Festival’s workshops, performances and “experiences,” as the program promised. Sunday’s activities included the “Landing Flying Fish” poetry workshop with Rufina C. Garay, Port Townsend’s poet laureate, and a Free-Flow Dance Funk afternoon with teaching artist Mary Purdy. 

“I believe there’s a poet inside of every single person,” Garay said as she set up her workshop space inside Building 305 at Fort Worden State Park. 

The “Landing Flying Fish” title refers to those poem fragments that fly across your field of view — words you can catch and slip into a piece of writing. And if you get stuck, Garay said, you don’t have to force your way through the poem. You can switch to drawing, painting, collage, even doodling. 

“Don’t judge it,” she added, whatever you do.

Garay filled her poetry room with colored pencils, magazines for collage, miniature paintings, crayons, found objects from the beach and from free piles around town. 

A variety of Port Townsend residents dropped into the workshop as soon as the doors opened at 11 a.m. Sunday. Zinnia Hansen, an experienced writer and recent University of Washington graduate, sat down at a table with Christine Walsh Rogers, a KPTZ DJ originally from New York City. They wrote a bit and chatted about their interests, which range from music to theater to classical philosophy. 

At the next table over, a pair of Boiler Room String Band musicians worked on redaction poems, using pages from the New Yorker magazine. Violinist Xavier Cooper said he opted for this form since redaction has been prominent in the news lately. Bandmate Millie O’Neill, who plays guitar and upright bass, chose the crossword puzzle and found that the clues are, in a way, poetic. 

The scene of the Free-Flow Dance Funk class at nearby Building 310, aka the Madrona MindBody Institute, was quieter at first. Only one participant showed up at 11 a.m., so Purdy waited until the noon hour, when a few more dancers had appeared. 

Then she put on her first song, “Golden” by Jill Scott.

“Livin’ my life like it’s golden, golden / I’m taking my own freedom / Putting it in my song/ Singing loud and strong / Grooving all day long … I’ll be high-steppin’ y’all / Letting the joy unfold …” 

Purdy proceeded to teach her people to groove, strut and bounce, and each did so, moving across the floor in their own ways. 

There were basic steps, there was some choreography and there was abundant warming up. Then Purdy changed gears and invited the class into a freestyle space: See how it feels, she said, to write the alphabet with your body. Music was provided, and when everyone had explored their physical ABCs, Purdy invited them to write their names with their arms, hips, legs, spines — whatever feels good. 

By the 1 o’clock hour, the dance studio had filled up with movers, including a mom who danced with her baby in a Snugli. Jon Batiste’s song “Freedom” poured out of the speaker, explaining what was happening here.

“When I move my body just like this / I don't know why / But I feel like freedom …

I hear a song that takes me back / And I lеt go / With so much freedom … “

“I want people to know that anyone can dance. I want to give people confidence to be in touch with their body and how it can move,” Purdy said after class. She believes each person deserves the freedom to “get out of their head, away from the noise,” and into the funky groove.

Both Garay and Purdy share their art forms with the community outside the Soundcheck Festival. Purdy teaches dance classes twice a week in Port Townsend: Wednesdays at 5:30 p.m. at the Port Townsend Athletic Club and Sundays at 5:30 p.m. at the Black Cat Pilates studio. She learned of the Soundcheck Festival at one of the Port Townsend Creative District’s Nexus meetups, which are held monthly at various locations. 

Garay, as poet laureate, will offer community activities throughout her term, which runs through 2027; information about them and about the Nexus gatherings is found at ptcreativedistrict.org.  

Purdy, before returning to teach another Soundcheck session, summed up what she hopes for most of all. 

“I want people to feel joy in expressing themselves,” she said. 

Published Sunday, March 1, at 1:36 p.m. by Nhatt Nichols

I spoke with superstar film buff Danni McClellan about the Port Townsend Film Festival Pop-up screening

Published Sunday, March 1, at 1:10 p.m. by Ben Shafer and CJ Fisher

Ever wondered what happens at Rainshadow Recording Studio? Take a tour with the Youth Reporting Lab.

Silas tells Ben Shafer all about his favorite game at the Pop-up Maker Fair

Published Sunday, March 1, at 12:56 p.m. by Ave Arroyo

Northwind Art School is here today in building 324 to teach anyone who wishes to learn how to make unique collages and zines! You'll find all ages making their own special project, some are cutting out pictures from a magazine, some are looking for their favourite colour of paper. Some are meticulous in their work, and some are going wild. The atmosphere, though a place filled with energy, is relaxing and allows everyone to focus on their new creations.

The Pop-up Maker Fair is bustling today with all sorts of visitors looking for some fun, and of course, games, in the building 305 North Gallery. You'll find artists, developers and everything in between to learn from as you test out their own works. Creativity is never low in the room, and conversations are erupting at every corner.

Kids are playing video games and making storyboards, and adults are learning from one another with shared wisdom. At the Pop-up Maker Fair, all ages are fascinated by these engaging crossbreeds, blurring the line between new and traditional media.

Published Sunday, March 1, at 11:27 a.m. by Ben Shafer and CJ Fisher

Catch a snippet of Wizard from last night at the legion!

Published Sunday, March 1, at 11:27 a.m. by Ave Arroyo

Wizard blew the roof off the American Legion last night at the All Original, All Local Music Concert. Their set, complete with long, catchy jam sessions with a techno twist, had couples and friends alike dancing together on the floor. With their contagious vibe, original songs that knock your socks off and an almost romantic feel to their beats, Wizard showed everyone that they sure know how to party.

Published Saturday, February 28, at 6:20 p.m. by Ben Shafer and CJ Fisher

Earlier today the Boiler Room String Band and singer-songwriter Tex Armstrong performed in Council Chambers

Published Saturday, February 28, at 6:00 p.m. by Ave Arroyo

Local punk band, Chloroform Rags, melted faces off as openers for the All Original Music Concert at the American Legion Hall. The vocalist, Ben Shafer, delivered quick and witty punchlines between each song in their set and engaged the audience with his sense of humour, and the entire band got the room dancing with a vibe like no other. The room shook, and the crowd screamed in delight. Chloroform Rags had started the night on the best note possible.

Published Saturday, February 28, at 5:45 p.m. by Ben Shafer and CJ Fisher

Published Saturday, February 28, at 5:00 p.m. by Ave Arrayo

Brooke Weber takes the stage with her slow and intellectual verses at the City Council Chambers for 'Performances for the People'. Brooke's voice, although starting quietly, rose to a fuller tone as she recited her poems and shared a story or two about her dog. Weber could be described as a big perspective in a smaller package. Rufina C. Garay shares the same sentiment, stating, "Everything she does is magic."

Logan Henderson is next to share his writing at the City Chambers. Rufina C. Garay introduced him as a very down-to-earth human and shared that "when Logan speaks, it's this synthesis that's so profound it leaves you wondering why you're in the room." With his unique style and smooth voice, Logan stole the crowd with his shorter written works made to have an impactful punch.

Nan Toby Feldman takes the audience's hearts right at the start, with Rufina C. Garay paying an emotional tribute to Tyrrell, putting Tyrrell's hand to her forehead as a sign of respect for an elder in the Filipino culture and expressing to her, "I wish people had more time with you."

Tyrrell starts off her performance by telling the audience that "part of life is slowing down and doing your best." Tyrrell spoke gracefully and shared much wisdom with the crowd in the short amount of time she had onstage, with her thought and emotion-provoking poems and confident stature in her elegant velvet red top.

Published Saturday, February 28, at 4:57 p.m. by Ben Shafer and CJ Fisher

Published Saturday, February 28, at 4:07 p.m. by Ave Arroyo

Leila Block sings her heart out to the crowd at the City Council Chambers for 'Performances for the People', with many couples dancing along to her bluesy love songs. Block brings a high energy to her set with an almost comedian-like air to her vibe, and the audience eats it up happily.

Leila Block showcases one of her many creative facial expressions to her audience, as well as her ability to make an entire room full of people laugh hysterically. Block engages naturally with her spectators, cracking jokes and anecdotes gracefully with perfect punchline timing in between the harmonious tunes she covers and writes.

Published Saturday, February 28, at 3:30 p.m. by Diane Urbani de la Paz

Art — how it flows into our environment, our minds and our lives — was the topic at hand  during Saturday’s Soundcheck Festival activities in downtown Port Townsend. 

“When I see blank spaces, I imagine murals on them,” said Anya Noble of Seattle, who happened to find out about Soundcheck while visiting her mother who lives here. 

Noble had the opportunity to help paint a 16-by-4-foot community mural inside the Cotton Building, one of Soundcheck’s activity centers from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. The city-owned space hosted the Creation Station, which mixed walk-up art projects with music by Nu Crew, a student-run DJ collective from Port Townsend High School. 

The mural, designed by Mike and Suzie Croy of Park Avenue Studio in Port Townsend, is a panoramic  view of Port Townsend with wild creatures representing various livelihoods here. A beaver stands for the woodworkers; an otter is a nurse; a puffin is a teacher, a bald eagle symbolizes the government, and an otter represents the maritime community. 

To create the reference for the mural, Mike Croy went out to Marrowstone Island and took photos of Port Townsend from there. He printed a paint-by-numbers-style pattern onto two 4- by 8-foot panels and brought them to the Cotton Building with a table full of paint colors and brushes, and invited everyone in. 

“I clearly can’t color inside the lines,” quipped Noble. Then she kept painting, as the bright sun poured in the front door of the Cotton Building. Fellow painters stepped up beside her to add hot pink and marine blue to the mural, which Croy said will later be installed at Mountain View Commons. 

A few feet away, people worked at the button-making stations, adding personal messages and colors to their small canvases. “War is over if you want it,” declared one, hearkening back to John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s song released in 1971. 

About a block down Water Street, an afternoon Artist Salon brought together a group of people at Velocity cafe. Organized by multidisciplinary artist Drea DiPrete and Port Townsend Art Award winner Alexandra Anagnostopoulos, the salon was open from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and became a heart-to-heart discussion that traveled across the subject map.  

Anagnostopoulos is among the artists who, over the past year, turned the fence around Memorial Field into a community canvas. The cavalcade of paintings on the fence conveyed artists’ ideas about home, history, loss and resilience. For her work on this complex project, Anagnostopoulos received the Art Catalyst Award at Friday evening’s Soundcheck Festival kickoff event at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. 

For the first Art Salon prompt, Anagnostopoulos asked: When do you feel most at home? 

One woman responded that the beach — wherever, whichever — gives her that sense of connection. Seeing the water and the sky gives her a feeling of belonging, she said, that transcends time and place.

Anagnostopoulos found this resonant. and said that when she goes home to Greece, she feels in her bones that she is being held by the sea. 

Another participant said she is still in search of home. She hasn’t found the place where she can rest — and anticipates an ongoing quest for it. 

The lone man in the group said there’s a word in Welsh for the deep longing for a place that doesn’t exist. “Hiraeth" connotes a kind of homesickness, a feeling for a place or time one can’t quite reach. 

At the same time, home isn’t necessarily a physical place at all. It’s a concept and it is found within, he added. 

There is a way each of us can reconnect with ourselves, said another woman. 

“Art brings you into the present moment,” she said. Putting paint to canvas can make time pressures and longings melt away. Making art, whether it’s music or mural-painting, is a way to come back home. 

Anagnostopoulos had one more thing to add. 

“Art,” she said, “is the oldest way for us to connect.” 

Published Saturday, February 28 at 3:30 p.m. by Ave Arroyo

The wonderful Community Mural paint table! Two local mural painters (both to the left) were looking to help the community create something together and found that opportunity at our very own Soundcheck Creation Station. One of the artists, Suzie (second to left), described the atmosphere as "amazing, chaotic in a good way." Various people of all ages have been stopping at the mural board to add their own special flair to the blank canvas. The most popular doodle so far has been music notes.

A student from Port Townsend High School's Nu Crew shreds some beats on the DJ table in the Creation Station.

Tex Armstrong serenades his audience in the City Council Chambers for 'Performances for the People'. He engages with the crowd smoothly and adds a bit of humour and relatability to his set, whilst beautifully showing off his very own songs.

Boiler Room String Band returns to the stage with their most popular songs in the City Council Chambers for another segment of 'Performances for the People'. Their set goes from slow and melodic to fast and catchy tunes that the crowd wishes to dance happily to.

The Port Townsend Youth Theater Ensemble charms the audience in the City Council Chambers for 'Performances for the People'. 7-12 graders, primarily from Ocean K-12, enact unique improvised skits called "Fluid Sculptures" with the help of their director and the topics they take from the audience using good old-fashioned crowd work.

The Port Townsend High School food truck, the Culinary Cruiser, is here at Pope Marine Park serving some delicious Hispanic cuisine all under $20! Led by their eager teacher, Jennifer Kruse, these amazing and hard-working students are ready to serve the hungry people of Soundcheck.

Published Saturday, February 28, at 2:08 p.m. by C.J. Fisher and Ben Shafer

Published Saturday, February 28 at 10:30 a.m. by Diane Urbani de la Paz

From Art Catalyst to Legacy Maker: Five Awards Presented in Soundcheck Kickoff

By Diane Urbani de la Paz 

Now that was a roomful of joy. 

Artists—musicians, thespians, painters, community builders—came to the Port Townsend Arts Awards Friday night to revel in one another. The Jefferson County Fairgrounds’ Erickson Building filled up with cheering, stomping and standing ovations as the Port Townsend Arts Commission presented five awards to start off this weekend’s Soundcheck Festival. 

Port Townsend Mayor Amy Howard, along with emcees Christine Walsh Rogers and Jim Burke, city poet laureate Rufina C. Garay and arts commission chair Alexis Arrabito led the celebration, starting with the first honor: to Alexandra Anagnostopoulos, winner of the Arts Catalyst Award. 

Anagnostopoulos orchestrated the sweeping street art project on the fence surrounding Port Townsend’s Memorial Field. When she walked to the stage, the room rose up to applaud. 

The fence, which became a wide canvas for some 85 participants, will be torn down—that was known from the start—so those who added their art to it were able to “just be in the moment and paint without attachment,” Anagnostopoulos said. 

The art fence, which runs along Quincy, Washington and Monroe streets around the old stadium, stands beside the site of the indigenous village of Qatáy. The paintings show tenderness, sorrow, joy and grief—“it is all heart,” said Anagnostopoulos, and “an antidote for disconnection.”

The next winner, Chimacum High School band director Daniel Ferland, spoke up for connection through music. Ferland, also a founder of the Youth Education in Arts, or YEA summer music camps, received the Art Educator Award. He was hailed for one of his next gigs with the Chimacum band: playing in the U.S. 250th anniversary Independence Day parade this July 4 in Washington, D.C. 

“I take this on behalf of all public school music educators,” Ferland said after urging the crowd to contact their local music teachers and offer support. 

Then came the Creative Community Builder Award, presented to Genevieve Barlow, who is a cofounder of Saltfire Theatre, the executive director of KPTZ Community Radio and the artist network coordinator at Centrum. After another outpouring of applause, Barlow touted what she loves about live theater and live radio: the community’s willingness to engage.

“When you join us as an audience, you have to trust us. You come into that space, and you don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said. 

“You don’t know how you’re going to feel; what’s going to change your mind. It’s a very vulnerable thing.” 

The Arts Legacy Award went to a woman who has been part of the county’s arts community for more than four decades: Martha Worthley. She has taught art in Port Townsend public schools, edited the Leader’s arts coverage, graced spaces including the Rose Theatre and Centrum’s Fiddle Tunes with her large-scale original artwork, and served as a Centrum program manager, coordinating artist residencies and youth access to arts camps. 

Today, Worthley is executive director of Northwind Art, the nonprofit organization operating Jeanette Best Gallery downtown, Northwind Art School at Fort Worden State Park and other community programs. 

Linda Rosenbury, Northwind’s board president, accepted the award on Worthley’s behalf, since the winner had a previous commitment: Some time ago she was asked to give a talk at the Collective Visions Gallery in Bremerton on this same Friday evening.  

Rosebury read Worthley’s message: “It’s exciting to be among a group of creative leaders receiving awards this year. We are lucky to have the arts as a foundational piece of our identity in the region. Thanks to my fellow awardees for their work to make it so,” she wrote. 

“I feel lucky to be part of creating an infrastructure that will benefit folks in years to come,” Worthley added. 

The final honor, the Youth Impact Award, went to a community of people who are also involved with the future. 

The Port Townsend Youth Theater—cofounders Tobi and Danny McEnerney and artist director Marc Weinblatt—ignited a wave of cheers as they brought a flock of young artists up to the stage with them. 

Weinblatt saluted the community members, including professionals, who have lifted up the young people in the project. These kids, he said, “are just open. They’re ready. They absorb, and then they fly.” 

On Saturday during the Soundcheck Festival, members of the project will do a playback theater session. They’re the newly created PT Youth Theater Ensemble, making its debut during the Performances for the People in the Port Townsend City Council Chambers at 250 Madison St. 

From 2:15 p.m. to 3 p.m., audience members will have a chance to share their stories, and see the young performers act them out, then and there. 

“Come see them fly without a net,” Weinblatt said. 

The Port Townsend Arts Awards, which began in 1999, are one of the ways the community tends to its artists, said Arts Commission chair Arrabito. She added that the commission supports artists, through grants and these awards, in turning their visions into reality. 

“That’s what tonight is about,” she said. Arrabito then expressed her hope that the awards party in front of her keeps growing—in size and in joy. 

The city commission’s message to art makers, she said, is: “we see you, we value you; what you do matters.”

Youth Reporting Lab Participants

Ave Arroyo

Hellooo, my name is Ave. I love to doodle and write and I'm very big on game theory, comedy and philosophy. I also love hanging out in nature and studying/watching animals. One of my favorite things to do is listen to my vinyls or music on my CD and cassette players, also to argue and defend what I stand for. Covering Soundcheck would be huge for me, I love music and the opportunity to experience it while getting it out there for others to see is amazing. I love being press. 

CJ Fisher

My name is CJ Fisher I play guitar and french horn. I love all of the arts but I mostly focus on music, drawing, and filmmaking. I wanted to cover soundcheck because I love what soundcheck is doing supporting local artists around Jefferson county 

Ben Shafer

Ben Shafer is 16 and has lived in Port Townsend for five years. He has always been extremely passionate about the arts and is excited to help document sound check.