News Release

HSBC Workshop Stage highlights

PORTLAND , Ore. — The 2006 Safeway Waterfront Blues Festival, June 30 to July 4, will offer a full line-up of educational workshops, performances and children’s programming.

The festival will team up for the fourth year with Portland 's nonprofit music education program, Ethos, Inc., to host the intimate HSBC Workshop Stage as well as the Ethos Kids Blues Lab , a special place for children. You’ll find the HSBC Workshop Stage and the Ethos Kids Blues Lab on the western edge of the main festival site, just south of the Police Memorial.

The Ethos Kids Blues Lab is housed in the Ethos Music Mobile, a 1977 Bristol Double Decker Bus from London . Retrofitted with keyboards, drum kits and other musical instruments, the Music Mobile brings music education to under-served communities throughout Oregon .

During the festival, the HSBC Workshop Stage offers a full schedule of workshops aimed at blues novices as well as experts. When blues artists aren’t performing on the Credit Union Stage, you’ll find lots of exciting activities on the HSBC Workshop Stage. These performance and demonstrations offer festival-goers a chance to hear and see some of the festival artists up close, to ask them questions and to see how they do what they do. The stage will also host low-key acoustic performances throughout the weekend.

"The workshops give the festival a cultural depth that doesn't exist at most other festivals," says Lisa Wiebe, director of development at Oregon Food Bank.

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