Click on the above 2018 festival sampler, or see all the acts on our Performers page.
HUDSON WEST MUSIC FESTIVAL
Hudson West presented ten acts in its annual music festival at Grace Church in downtown Jersey City on September 8, 2018. Melding art and acoustic music, this day-long event provided the best in regional and national acoustic music acts.
It is a music festival with a different approach - the selected musicians were intentionally eclectic and covered a broad array of acoustic music ranging from blues, honky-tonk, Django Rheinhardt hot jazz, contemporary singer-songwriters, and some artists with a bit more out-of-the-box sound (baroque-folk, anyone?).
THE MELDING OF MUSIC AND ART
Spectacular stage back drops, regional artists works and roving sketch artists capturing the event live...
Free musical workshops, all by musicians performing at the festival, provided an extraordinary opportunity to learn flatpicking guitar techniques, the very popular yodeling, and others. Check them out at Music Workshops.
Rounding out the festival experience included a full bar, an entire hall dedicated to an array of food and craft vendors, and roving sketch artists that captured the moment.
"...the organizers managed to scale the pinnacle of art-meets-organization... it was stunning."
-Fred Volkert
2017 Hudson West Folk Festival
2019's FESTIVAL
The next festival will be held on September 14, 2019 at Grace Church in Jersey City. We will once again provide top performers, original artwork on our stages and throughout the venue, and those wonderful music workshops.
You can hear the performances from 2018 on our Performers web page, or go to our Hudson West 2017 YouTube Playlist to see performances from 2017.
MUSIC RECOMMENDATIONS
Below are a few recommendations from the music curators of Hudson West Folk Festival. These recommendations are often found in those intimate, hard-to-find, music venues that make the NYC metro area renowned for its musical dynamism. Enjoy!
Friday, February 8th Doors 6:30 pm, Concert 7:30 pm
Location: Paulus Hook neighborhood of Jersey City, NJ
Reservations: www.SpiralSounds.org
M Shanghai is a local New York City band that has been around the block and their performance shows they know what their doing. I've seen them often around the city and love their homespun style with all the musicians gathered around a single condenser mic that gives them such a warm, intimate sound. Their American roots music includes straight forward country styling but also impressively sophisticated music with varied rhythms, dark moody passages and wonderful lyrics. The rather large band provides a wonderfully full, complex sound enhanced by the harmonies and excellent solo performances on mandoline, violin and guitar.