Event

ELLNORA: Dan Zanes and Friends
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ELLNORA: Dan Zanes and Friends

Friday, September 11, 2009, at noon | Lobby

ELLNORA | The Guitar Festival | We’ll whoop, clap, yelp, chortle, whistle, stomp, squeal, and sing along when Grammy Award winners Dan Zanes and Friends bring “homemade family music” to the Lobby. Dan used to be a rocker (in the 1980s band Del Fuegos), but once his daughter was born, it felt more natural and more important to hang out in the park and cajole a bunch of dads into starting a loose band to play just for the joy of it. Ever since, he’s been cultivating the musical spirit in every person he meets up with.

Adults sometimes misplace the uninhibited wildness that sprouts from children, and Dan—maybe with The Blind Boys of Alabama, Kronos Quartet, Lou Reed, or Sheryl Crowe or maybe with orphans in South Africa or maybe with those dads at the park—points them to it. He considers himself the ringmaster of a variety show that will recover those long-lost songs of childhood or of history, scrape off any fear of looking foolish, and unleash the music-making, fun-loving people who may be trapped in our stodgy grownup bodies. Among the train tunes and Jamaican sounds and Zulu traditional songs and salsa and sea shanties in Dan’s musical kit are the folk songs that Carl Sandburg collected in his travels across the country. With Colin Brooks, Sonia de los Santos, and friends, he’ll rev up for contemporary takes on tunes you may know and songs you never thought you knew.

Dan Zanes and Friends will spin these familiar songs into a giant block party in the Lobby that will spill outward when you gather up these melodies and your revamped musical philosophy into your songbag and carry them to your own homes and neighborhoods. And maybe you can start a local band of dads and kids and teachers and cousins and sisters and anyone else who wants to join in!

Recommended for ages 3 and up

Go to the official ELLNORA web site
Corporate Power Train Engine:
Eastland Suites Hotel and Conference Center
Scanics

Corporate Power Train Sponsors:
WCIA 3
JSM Development

Patron Sponsor:
Anonymous

Corporate Gold Sponsor:
One Main Development

Patron Co-sponsors:
Frances and Marc Ansel
Jean Huddleston, Kelly Foster, and Paul Foster
A. Mark Neuman
Mary and George Perlstein
Carol and Ed Scharlau

Corporate Silver Sponsors:
Chief/Bauer Heating & Air Conditioning
Dean’s Graphic Division
Hendrick House
The Blind Man Hunter Douglas Gallery

Corporate Bronze Sponsors:
Bacca Cigar Company
Barham Benefit Group
Fluid Events LLC
Precision Graphics
Jeffrey Van Buren, Senior Vice President of Wells Fargo Advisors LLC, and Valerie Van Buren

Additional Support: Fluid Events LLC

Supported by the Performing Arts Fund, a program of Arts Midwest funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art, with additional contributions from the Illinois Arts Council, the General Mills Foundation, and the Land O’Lakes Foundation