NORWOOD -- The Norwood Village Green Concert Series presents Northern Symphonic Winds Thursday, June 25, and Martha Redbone on Sunday, June 28. Both concerts begin at 7 p.m.

Northern New York’s only professional wind ensemble, Northern Symphonic Winds will perform music suitable to outdoor concerts. This will be the wind ensemble’s 9th appearance for the Norwood Village Green Concert Series.

Founded in 1998, Northern Symphonic Winds is a 46-52-piece wind and percussion ensemble comprised of faculty from the Crane School of Music, Northern New York music teachers, other professionals, and selected Crane students. The ensemble holds firmly to three primary objectives: to feature the finest wind and percussion performers available in the North Country, to perform music of the highest quality, and to bring enjoyment and satisfaction not just to the ensemble’s musicians, but also to audiences around the North Country.

Its conductors have included Tim Topolewski, Scott Lavine, James Madeja, and Brian Doyle.

“In a brilliant collision of cultures, the powerful blues and soul singer Martha Redbone has recorded an album called The Garden of Love: Songs of William Blake, which was produced by John McEuwen, of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. In it, the mystical, humanistic words of the eighteenth-century English poet are fused with the melodies, drones, and rhythms of the Appalachian string-band music that she absorbed as a child from her grandparents, in Black Mountain, Kentucky”. – The New Yorker

“Martha Redbone’s journey back to the source of American music, and to her own heritage, has conjured up an artistic triumph. The Garden Of Love poignantly reveals a musician at the top of her game, vocally, intellectually, and spiritually. One not only hears the voice of the Bard, in this case William Blake’s legendary prose arranged and phrased brilliantly, but also the very origins of American music arising from the blend of American Indian, African American, and English folk music traditions. It’s the dawn of a new day for this fascinating artist, and we’re all the beneficiaries of her confident, and yet sensitive, quest,” said Tim Johnson, Director of the Smithsonian Institute; National Museum of the American Indian

Alongside her career as a recording artists and songwriter, Martha Redbone has maintained a steady involvement with causes she believes in utilizing her celebrity in Indian Country for fundraising and leadership. Ms. Redbone holds an annual Traditional Music Workshop within the United Houma Nation’s Cultural Enrichment Summer Camp program teaching grade school children the music from her Choctaw and Cherokee heritage as well as incorporating the tribe’s own Houma-French language.

 Admission is free but there is a pass the bucket. For further information visit nvgcs.org or call 353-2437.