June 6, 2022
Greetings, Friends!
We hope that you and your family are all healthy and safe now that ‘spring has sprung,’ and we also hope that you all enjoyed a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, marking the unofficial beginning of the summer season.
Of course, Memorial Day has much greater importance as an opportunity for all of us to pay tribute to our fellow Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. All of us in Swingtime feel strongly that our debt of gratitude and our heartfelt thanks should not be limited to just one or two days a year, and since today is the 78th anniversary of D-day--which led to our ultimate victory in WW II--we send out a special salute to those members of ‘The Greatest Generation’ who gave their all for us.
Along those lines, Swingtime will pay musical homage to all those brave Americans in our summer 2022 program, as part of our traditional salute to the Veterans and the Troops, and we are very excited to tell you now about our extensive 2022 concert season! We’ve been hard at work preparing our brand new program for this summer, and we can’t wait to see you at one of our upcoming shows in June, July & August.
FYI, I’ve arranged this as a “Save the Dates” message by region, so that you can plan on the concerts closest to you, but you can always check out the chronological listing of our concerts on our website.
Starting farthest from home, we are thrilled to celebrate our fourteenth annual visit to Connecticut’s renowned Music Mountain Festival in Falls Village, CT (Sat., July 23) for its Twilight Jazz series (which has been moved to a 7pm start this year!). Tickets are on sale now, so please make sure to get yours before this show sells out! https://www.musicmountain.org/show-details/swingtime
In New York City, we have both sides of the East River covered, starting with our return to celebrate America for the Central Astoria Waterfront Independence Celebration with Fireworks in Astoria Park, Queens (Wed., June 29). We are thrilled to be invited back for this spectacular event, which drew a crowd of over 5,000 people last year, so we hope you will plan to join us! Then, across the RFK/Triboro Bridge to Manhattan, we return to NYC for our twelfth annual concert for the Summer Sounds series at Carl Schurz Park, on the East River promenade near Gracie Mansion (Wed., July 20).
At home on Long Island, we are honored to return once again to the Nassau County Parks Summer Concert series at Eisenhower Park's Harry Chapin Lakeside Theatre (Fri., July 8). Other Nassau highlights include: our annual show for the Long Beach Concert Series (Wed., August 10; Neptune Blvd. Stage); and we kick off our season with a return to the Village of Mineola Concert Series at Mineola Memorial Park Amphitheatre (Sat., June 18)!
And last, but certainly not least, we can’t wait for our performances for our friends in Suffolk County, including: our return to Heckscher Park’s Chapin Rainbow Stage for the 57th Huntington Summer Arts Festival (Sun., July 31); our 11th annual appearance on the Rocky Point Summer Concert Series at St. Anthony of Padua Church (Tue., August 2); our 33rd annual “homecoming” at Westhampton Beach Village Green Gazebo (Thurs., August 4); plus, a brand new series for us—the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton, NY (Thurs., July 14), with room for dancers to cut a rug in front of our outdoor bandstand!
For these shows, as we bask in the warm summer sunlight, Swingtime is excited to present a brand new program called Sunrise Serenade. That shining star in the daytime sky has inspired writers and musicians since time began, and the solar lyrics and melodies from the Great American Songbook give us the power to swing! We will keep you ‘on the sunny side of the street’ with music from artists including Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Les Brown, and Frank Sinatra, plus 100th birthday tributes to bandleaders Ray Anthony, Frank Wess and Neal Hefti, and superstar vocalists Doris Day and Judy Garland!
More details will follow in our newsletters in the coming months, and we hope to see you at one or more of our summer performances. Plus, don’t forget to check our website regularly for more details about the upcoming concerts and new ones that we may add to our calendar. In the meantime, please do remember the fallen heroes and their families, all of whom made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom, and let’s honor and cherish their memory as we celebrate America!
Swingingly yours,
