The Warwick Arts Festival presents 'Farm Fest' this weekend in Pine Island

This Community 2000 project celebrates music, dance and theater in Warwick Pine Island - The Warwick Summer Arts Festival presents “Farm Fest,” two days of music, dance and theater on Saturday and Sunday, July 16 and 17, at the Scheuermann Farm & Greenhouses in Pine Island. Pack a picnic, bring the whole family and enjoy a weekend of spectacular performances. Saturday’s opening act The festival opens Saturday at 7 p.m., with rising star Amber Rubarth, who won the grand prize in this year’s NPR Mountain Stage New Song Contest. Her songs have attracted enthusiastic praise from NPR’s All Songs Considered, the Huffington Post, BBC Radio, Acoustic Guitar Magazine, a Sun Studio Session now airing nation-wide on PBS and many TV shows such as One Tree Hill. At 21, Rubarth put aside her career as a chain saw sculptor in Nevada in order to pursue music. She taught herself guitar, started playing open mics and began touring throughout the states, Europe and Japan. New fans told their friends and soon her songs had received more than 1.5 million plays on MySpace. Many concerts began to sell out and she was asked to share the stage with Loudon Wainwright III, Roger McGuinn, Colin Hay, Martin Sexton and Lisa Loeb. Rubarth now composes for films as well, most recently composing all music with Paul Brill for the highly acclaimed Sundance Film Festival winner “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.” She is also one half of Brooklyn’s buzz band The Paper Raincoat, and iTunes Indie Spotlight favorite. “With songs both quirky and endearingly candid, Amber Rubarth is a refreshing talent on the rise,” wrote a reviewer for BlogCritics. “ As illustrated on her third and latest LP, Good Mystery, she complements a gentle folk/pop vibe with a storyteller’s engagement and the unassuming, often awkward charm of a girl you wished lived next door. Sunday On Sunday, July 17, writer and performer Will MacAdams and choreographer and dancer Melissa Padham are each premiering new performance works followed by the Defibulators, Brooklyn bluegrass with a kick. The Defibulators have emerged as one of the most engaging live acts from the thriving roots scene in Brooklyn - melding bluegrass, rockabilly, honky-tonk, and punk into their own eclectic sound. They wield an arsenal of guitars, banjos, fiddles, and junkyard percussion, with relentless energy and virtuosity. The Defibulators jump-start new life into vintage country music and deliver a unique sound that’s anything but old timey. Razor sharp harmonies by Bug Jennings and Erin Bru, along with dark and surreal lyrics, illuminate songs that are gritty and witty; spinning tales of deception, debauchery, depleted bank accounts, fanaticism, vintage firearms, biological anomalies, airline intoxication, and animal ennui. Bountiful is the third in the cycle of plays created by playwright Will MacAdams about the Warwick region, which began with Water and Stone during last year’s Festival - and continued with a collaboration with the Alamo Farm Workers Community Center this spring. Like those pieces, Bountiful takes as its central subject our local soil and the stories that define it. In this piece, MacAdams creates a mythical character inspired by the Black Dirt, who weaves an interactive tale of glaciers, immigration, hard-working hands and, of course, onions. The short play is written and performed by MacAdams, and features costumes by Warwick’s own mad hatter, Gar Wang, and prop design by local artist Gaby Ramirez. A new dance piece by Isis Movement Co. co-director and Warwick native Melissa Padham will investigate energy transference through the incorporation of original movement, recorded lectures and spacial exploration. Marcela Alvarez shares directing responsibilities for the Brooklyn -based troupe which was founded in 2009 . Since their 2009 debut at the Warwick Arts Festival, Isis Movement Co. has performed at various venues, including The Winter Garden of the World Financial Center, Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn and Triskelion Arts in Brooklyn. This will be Isis Movement Co.’s third year performing at the Warwick Arts Festival. About Farm Fest The Warwick Summer Arts Festival is a project of Community 2000 and made possible with support from The Town of Warwick and with generous donations from Shop Rite of Warwick and Orange & Rockland Utilities. “Bountiful” was made possible with funds provided by NoMAA Regrant Program, made possible by the JPMorgan Chase Foundation and the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation. If you go Farm Fest, two days of music, dance and theater, takes place Saturday and Sunday, July 16 and 17, at the Scheuermann Farm & Greenhouses, located at 73 Little York Road in Pine Island,. There is a suggested donation of $10 a person or $20 a family help to support the arts and culture of Warwick. For more information, visit www.warwickarts.org or call 845-469-0963.