Norwood Village Green Concert Series celebrating 50th anniversary

This year will feature more than 100 local performers in celebration of the 50th anniversary season.

The lineup includes a music education event on June 1; The Goddard Girls and The Dotys on June 15; Northern Symphonic Winds on June 22; Theresa Bear Fox, Maria Tartaglia and Nicole White on June 29; music and audience dance direction with Dan Duggan on July 2; The All Star Big Band under the direction of Wally Siebel with guest artist Mike Dubaniewicz on saxophone on July 6; and Phil Hurley on July 16.

Rounding out the local performers are Paul Meyers in a double bill and touring guest Phoebe Hunt on July 20; Divided Roads in a double bill and touring guests Ursa and the Major Key on July 23; Norwoodstock curated by Andy Van Duyne on Aug. 6; and Norwood’s own Brass Firemen on Aug. 10.

“People say, ‘You don’t have any local groups.’ The first 10 years we only had local groups. This coming summer, we are going to have more than 100 local performers, even though we also have two Grammy Award winners on the stage,” said Joseph M. Liotta, who co-founded the series with his late wife, Harriet “Mickey” Liotta and currently serves as president and program director. “We’ve had over 4,000 local performers on the series. I get a little upset when people say, ‘Where’s the local people?’ We’ve had more local people on our concert series than anybody else has on their concert series.”

But, he said, the concert series is also about bringing in some big names in the music business. Mr. Liotta, whose background is in music presentation, said that, including this summer, they’ve featured 26 Grammy Award winners.

He said the ability to bring in big name musical performers actually dates back to his high school days and school dances.

“They weren’t ordinary dances. We had major groups. We had Tito Puente on a Sunday afternoon for a dance. We paid them $1,300 at the time for this big band. He went on to be a genius in that field,” Mr. Liotta said.

At 16 years old, he said he was too young to negotiate with a musician. But, that didn’t stop them from bringing them to the north country.

“We couldn’t sign the contract. A guy who graduated from us and was going to Juilliard was 21 and he could sign contracts,” he said.

These days, Mr. Liotta said he tries to schedule a group that’s already in the Albany area for a festival.

“Groups come through there all the time. So, I get them on a Thursday night or a Sunday night,” he said. “On the other hand, I will negotiate with a group that’s not coming here at all.”

One of those groups, Grammy Award-winning Ranky Tanky, will be appearing this summer. They’re set to appear on Aug. 13 to close out the 50th anniversary season.

“They won a Grammy in 2020. They won a Grammy this year, too. I got Ranky Tanky before they got this particular Grammy,” he said. “You deal with some of the same agents, so you have a relationship with those agents.”

Also appearing this year will be three groups representing music from Andalusia, Spain, Mexico via Los Angeles, and India.

La Banda Morisca will perform music from Andulusia on July 9. It’s comprised of musicians from Cadiz, Spain with different professional backgrounds.

Tres Souls will perform classic bolero music from Mexican films of the 1930s and 1940s on July 27. Each member of the trio is an accomplished musician, and each inherited the knowledge and importance of Mexican heritage music through their family and generations before them.

Sitar master Ustad Shaffat Khan will make a return visit to the Norwood Village Green Concert Series on July 30 with his accompanying musicians, Victor Nika on guitar and Rishy Mehrotra on tabla. A world-renowned Indian classical musician, he has enthralled audiences all around the world, performing at many prestigious concert halls, festivals, universities, museums and more. He performed with Stevie Wonder at the Bonnaroo Festival, one of the biggest festivals in the United States.

They’re among a notable group of performers that have appeared on band shell over the years.

“We have a program we hand out to the audience. It’s an added expense. Nobody else does that with their concert series. This year, it’s going to be historical in nature and list every performer we’ve ever had and every award these performers had received,” Mr. Liotta said.

They all appear on a band shell, which has a history dating back to the 1950’s. It was dedicated as “The Liotta Band Shell on the Norwood Village Green” in appreciation for 42 years of dedication and service to Norwood on July 30, 2015. The band shell replaced a performance stage which was part of a town hall that was demolished in favor of a new building.

“My wife and I had the idea of putting it on the side of the municipal building. In 1972, the village celebrated its 100th anniversary. That got me thinking about all this stuff. We wanted a band shell on the side of the municipal building, and we were going to raise the money to do it,” Mr. Liotta said.

The village board members at the time said they did not want a wooden structure because it wouldn’t be permanent. They said it had to be constructed from cement, and they chose a site on the side of Bernard Avenue rather than another site that had been considered.

“They made a great decision for us. This has a greater space for the audience,” he said.

Fundraising went on for four years.

“We thought we were going to have a $4,000 structure there. The thing became a $17,000 structure. It took us four years to raise that money,” Mr. Liotta said. “We went ad hoc. We didn’t have any organization. We went to the fire department, and the fire department became the sponsor of that structure.”

With the assistance of some grant funding, including a federal grant that was awarded to only two organizations in the state, they were able to dedicate the band shell on Sept. 25, 1975 as a major gift in recognition of the bicentennial of the American Revolution.

“It wasn’t completed yet. We put in multiple monies to keep it developed,” including a new sound system and lights, he said.

Now, as 50 years of music arrives on the Liotta Band Shell, Mr. Liotta said it’s time to perhaps step back.

“As we were going along, I said to myself, ‘My goal is to do this for 50 years.’ My goal now is to try to ease myself out of it. We’ve got some monies available to us to phase myself out and create several part-time jobs to take my place,” he said. “This is a full-time volunteer job for me. It’s all year long. I don’t think there’s 10 or 12 days during the year that I’m not doing something with this.”

However, Mr. Liotta continues to look forward.

“On the other hand, I’m writing a grant now for next year. I’m writing the grant even though I’m trying to retire from it. It’s like they said in The Godfather. You try to get out of it and they pull you back in,” he said.