Mayfair, the Allentown festival of the arts that was revived last year at Cedar Crest College, will return to that campus for a second year, the event says on its website.
And it already has announced its first musical act.
A competing festival, The Great Pennsylvania Music & Arts Celebration, which ran the same weekend as Mayfair at Allentown Fairgrounds this year, also has listed dates for a 2019 run on its Facebook page.
Mayfair, which was canceled for 2017 after more than three decades at Allentown’s Cedar Beach Park, then at Allentown Fairgrounds, will again be a three-day festival, May 24-26, according to www.cedarcrest.edu/mayfair/
And Mayfair says on its Facebook page that popular 1980s tribute act Rubix Kube will headline the festival’s main stage at 8 p.m. closing night.
The Great Pennsylvania Music & Arts Celebration says on its Facebook page that it will run May 25-27 at Allentown Fairgrounds, but has no other details there or on its website, http://pamusicsociety.org/
The free-admission Mayfair also is seeing applications from artists, performers, food vendors and volunteers. Applications are on the website, which lists an April 30 deadline for food vendors. Volunteers must sign up for at least two four-hour shifts.
The website says more than 20,000 attended the festival this year, and “we know that 2019 will be even bigger and better.”
That should not be a surprise. Lauren Condon, Cedar Crest’s director of Student Union and Engagement and Mayfair’s executive director, at the end of last year’s festival said it was “wildly successful” and provided “all the motivation to plan for next year.”
Condon said then that vendors were asking when they could apply for next year’s festival, and the event was flooded with inquiries of artists and vendors interested in taking part next year.
Condon said then that Cedar Crest campus has plenty of room for the event to expand, and “it’s my intention to fill it up.”
Rubix Cube has appeared several years at Bethlehem’s Musikfest and has played paid-ticket shows at Easton’s OneCentreSquare, GameChangerWorld in Upper Macungie Township and Penn’s Peak near Jim Thorpe. It has a paid-ticket show scheduled Feb. 1 at Musikfest Café at ArtsQuest Center in Bethlehem.
Mayfair at its height at Cedar Creek Park was a five-day event. It moved to Allentown Fairgrounds in 2013, citing heavy rains and flooding some years, then ended after a 2016 run, citing a lack of support.
The Great Pennsylvania Music & Arts Celebration took over the space at Allentown Fairgrounds, just a mile and a half away. Organizers said it drew about 10,000 people.
It has said its mission is preserving Pennsylvania’s distinct forms of music, as well as celebrating its diversity. Organizers have said they hope to grow it into a statewide celebration.
