PHOTOS: Newport Folk Festival Beats the Heat - Features Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, The Roots and...

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Monday, July 25, 2022

PHOTOS: Richard McCaffrey

The Newport Folk Festival returned with a vengeance over the weekend.

After previously being faced with the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic, the iconic music fest took on this year’s extremely high temps in stride — and featured both outstanding scheduled guests as well as some surprise stars.

Musical legends Joni Michell and Paul Simon took to the Fort Adams stage and stunned the crowd with their appearances.

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Every artist on the Newport Folk lineup chooses a music education program that they care about, and the Newport Folk Foundation makes a grant to that program — and aspiring local musicians got in on the action.

“We were so happy to celebrate the massive and often overlooked impact of Sister Rosetta Tharpe on today’s music with our friend, Celisse,” wrote Newport Folk on Sunday. “We invited Girls Rock RI — a local music education program — to join her on stage to perform Tharpe’s ‘Up Above My Head.’ To top it all off, ‘Gibson Gives” then generously donated brand new Gibson guitars to support their programs and to auction off to provide scholarships.”

Also locally — 11th Hour Racing, which is committed to environmental sustainability (read more about their Ocean Race involvement here), helped with transportation by providing a “bike valet” program so concertgoers could bike through Fort Adams.

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