High Sierra Music Festival is a multi-day music festival held in Quincy, California, a mountainous area about 80 miles northwest of Reno, Nevada.
The festival is held each year the weekend of July 4. The four-day festival features an eclectic mix of some of the most famous national and international names in jazz, newgrass, bluegrass and other improvisational music forms such as jamband music. Other represented genres include funk, afrobeat, electronica, and roots rock. Away from the music stages, patrons can attend workshops and exercise classes, shop for arts and crafts, or enjoy a wide variety of food and drink. Children's activities are featured throughout the weekend.
The first High Sierra Music Festival was in 1991, and was the genesis of High Sierra Music, of Berkeley, California. The organization has also produced festivals and concerts elsewhere in California, and in Nevada, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Missouri.
Past artists have included The Black Crowes, Bob Weir & RatDog, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, Bruce Hornsby, The String Cheese Incident, Nickel Creek, moe., Widespread Panic, Medeski Martin & Wood, Yonder Mountain String Band, Gov't Mule, John Butler Trio, Umphrey's McGee, My Morning Jacket, Les Claypool, Leftover Salmon, and The Slip (the only band to play the festival 12 consecutive years).
Famous quotes containing the words high, music and/or festival:
“But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister’s pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antic pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim, religious light.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“I cannot say what poetry is; I know that our sufferings and our concentrated joy, our states of plunging far and dark and turning to come back to the world—so that the moment of intense turning seems still and universal—all are here, in a music like the music of our time, like the hero and like the anonymous forgotten; and there is an exchange here in which our lives are met, and created.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“Don’t you know there are 200 temperance women in this county who control 200 votes. Why does a woman work for temperance? Because she’s tired of liftin’ that besotted mate of hers off the floor every Saturday night and puttin’ him on the sofa so he won’t catch cold. Tonight we’re for temperance. Help yourself to them cloves and chew them, chew them hard. We’re goin’ to that festival tonight smelling like a hot mince pie.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)