Millvale Music Festival strikes new notes in its third year

The third annual Millvale Music Festival, featuring 200 acts performing on 24 stages throughout the borough, will highlight the harmonious relationship between music and art.

On May 10, an all-ages, opening-night concert at 7:30 p.m. will kick off the festival with performances by Adelaide in Autumn, Victoria Morgan, The Summercamp and The Vics, along with visual artists at Mr. Smalls Theatre, 400 Lincoln Ave.

The following day, bands and solo artists will perform free shows of hip-hop, punk, metal, country and indie rock.

Sedgwick Street will transform into Arts on Sedgwick, an area where more than 20 visual artists will display and produce live art, councilman and festival committee member Paul Bossung said. Music in that area will have a “jazzy, funky vibe.” A couple of food trucks will line the street, and sponsors will serve beer.

“It’s a great time walking up and down the street, hearing some music,” Bossung said.

Artists, including Heinz Endowment grant winner Laura Jean McLaughlin, also will display their pieces near the vacant Millvale Studios at 220 North Ave.

This year, the Millvale Music Festival is creating a lasting reminder of the “partnership between music and art and how it has expanded beyond Sedgwick” Street during the festivities, Melissa Mason, planning committee member said. The festival will debut a mural in the business district created through the Hemispheric Conversations Urban Art Project (HCUAP).

According to the HCUAP website, Caitlin Bruce, Oreen Cohen and Shane Pilster organized the education and art program in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh: “The project seeks to create platforms for conversation and education about urban art production … and to explore aesthetic and historical connections between cities.”

In its first two years, HCUAP has focused on Pittsburgh, Chicago and León Guanajuato, Mexico.

“I think it’s a really exciting thing in our community,” Mason said. “I think that there’s already a lot of nice murals and there’s also some empty spaces, and so it’s nice to see something fill in those spaces. Not only for the people who live here, but for the people who pass through, just to see it and think about all the beauty that they see as they pass through Millvale.”

The festival is sponsoring the mural in conjunction with HCUAP, Rivers of Steel, Double L Bar and the borough.

Guests will find performance artists roaming throughout the festival and on a Sedgwick Street stage in between acts. New this year, spoken word artists will perform at Tupelo Honey Teas, 211 Grant Ave., and comedians will take the stage at Panza Gallery, 115 Sedgwick St.

The Millvale Music Festival is partnering with the Work Hard Pittsburgh co-op business incubator to broadcast live festival information, like shuttle, performance schedules and sponsor announcements, to venue TV screens.

Additionally, Bossung said people should check the festival Facebook page for a Work Hard Pittsburgh-designed app available for free download a week prior to the event.

“It’s going to have live GPS tracking of the shuttles, and it’s going to have all 24 stages,” he said. “You can see all of the acts and you can kind of like favorite them, so you can build your own schedule before the day and then as you’re walking around town the day, you can go, ‘Oh, this is coming up, or, I have like three bands to choose from at the 4 o’clock hour. What do I do?’ ’’

Guests may park at the Mt. Alvernia complex at 146 Hawthorne Road or near the Grossman Lane baseball field and take a shuttle courtesy of Millvale-based ABC Transit to six festival locations.

Lyft is providing a $10 discount code for anyone traveling to or from Millvale on the festival date. Festival planners will announce the code a week prior to the festival on the event Facebook page. Lyft will have a transit hub at the Grant and Sherman street intersection.

The Millvale Music Festival is a sub-committee of the nonprofit Millvale Borough Development Corporation.

“The first year really was amazing because the streets were so packed, the bars were so packed, all the event centers. And the vibrant atmosphere; it was crazy,” said Mayor Brian Spoales. Planners hope to maintain that atmosphere by possibly tripling the borough’s population on this year’s festival date.