Les Sampou to Perform at the Lakeville Arts & Music Festival

Get ready! Mark your calendar! The third Annual Lakeville Arts & Music Festival will take place Saturday September 29, 2007, between 10AM and 4PM!

Eight performers have been hired to date for the September event. One of these entertainers is Les Sampou, a female singer/songwriter of rock, blues and folk music. You can hear a pin drop when Les Sampou performs. When she wraps her arms around one of her steel guitars, and with a three-octave range belts out songs full of vivid detail, audiences can’t help but be transfixed.

Sampou is self-taught. She is a musical chameleon, singing like the “old-timers” when she presents her classic country blues renditions, and then switching her elastic vocals to include dramatic nuances in her rock originals, twang in her country sing-a-longs and velvet in her folk ballads.

Les Sampou got her start in Boston’s Haymarket subway stop in 1985. Sampou remembers it as the “very first time I played in front of more than one person.” It was in these tunnels that she met Ellie Mae Higgins and together they started a duo called “Double Edge”. Higgins and Sampou traded off guitar leads and rhythms, lead and harmony vocals. It was during this time Sampou delved into the Blues.

In the decades of the nineties, Less Sampou performed at all the major folk festivals including the Philadelphia Folk Festival, Winnipeg Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, Falcon Ridge in NY, Strawberry Festival in California and Kerrville Folk Festival in TX where she won the coveted “New Folk Award” ….winning out of 686 contestants. She also began giving Workshops at Berklee School of Music, at festivals, and for private groups on the Business of Music, Blues Guitar and Songwriting.

Visit her website at http://www.lessampou.com/ to hear a sampling of her remarkable sounds and then be sure to mark your calendar for the third annual Lakeville Arts & Music Festival. A schedule for all performers will be available by September.

Festival Organizaers are also seeking business sponsors as well as any individuals and/or families who would like to have their names listed in the 2007 Event Guide. Sponsorships are tax deductible. Anyone interested in joining the Mayflower Bank as a sponsor please contact the Organizing Committee.

Last year's festival, which included food, music, demonstrations, and interactive activities, in addition to the crafts, drew over three thousand attendees.

The Committee is also seeking additional Artisans and craftsmen. We are committed to a quality show; before acceptance, all potential crafters will be juried by a panel of artisans among the members of the Lakeville Arts Council. To ensure diversity, we will limit the number of dealers in certain categories. To have any questions answered and/or to receive an application, please email LakevilleFestival@hotmail.com. A limited number of spaces for non-profit organizations will be available to community service organizations and environmental groups on a first-come basis.

This event is supported in part from a grant from the Lakeville Arts Council and the Middleborough Arts Council; both are local agencies supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

Proceeds from the 2007 Arts and Music Festival will help to fund this year’s festival as well as year-round support for the arts and cultural efforts through the Lakeville Art Council for Lakeville and surrounding communities. Some of the projects funded by the Lakeville Arts Council include Theatre One Productions, the 2007 Cultural Presentation Series at the Lakeville Library, Lakeville Haunted House, Lakeville Garden Club Small 2007 Standard Flower Show, and the Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra 2006-07 Season.