July-August-September Update
Your eyes don’t deceive you—that’s three months-worth of newsletter to catch up on. What can I say? It was Musikfest season and time absolutely got away from me. Cavan, our Volunteer and Internship Coordinator, will be taking on Newsletter duties from now on and I trust that the release schedule will remain intact under her quality care.
The biggest news, of course, is that we successfully pulled off the 39th edition of Musikfest! Once again, we came together as a community and absolutely smashed previous records. Musikfest 2022 not only broke four “best day” records for food and beverage sales, but it was also the highest-attended ‘Fest ever with 1.24 million people visiting our little town of Bethlehem over those 10 days. To break records like that is a historic achievement, but it only sets up for the next great chapter—it’ll be the 40th Musikfest next year, and it will be a challenge to make it even bigger than this one was.
These records and successes don’t happen without you. Whether you were a Luckenbach Mill Monitor on 1st shift, a beer pourer at Zinzenplatz, or a Stagehand working through the muscle memory of being back up at Stadtplatz, these records and achievements belong to you. A total of 948 volunteers contributed to this year’s ‘Fest, including around 30 groups from around the community that included B. Braun, Guardian, Shift4, and more. We couldn’t have done it without you, and I can’t wait to usher in the historic 40th year with you as well.
September brought us the end of the Levitt Pavilion season, which in a sad turn of events had to be held in the Musikfest Café due to bad weather. We’ll be back at it again next May, and look forward to welcoming new volunteers as we pass the buckets in warm weather once more.
We kicked off the month of September with SangriaFest, which was a challenging day who all came out to help. We went from 700 tickets sold to 2,000 within a week, so we all taken by surprise from the sheer excitement Upper Macungie has for sangria! I wanted to extend a special thank you to all volunteers who were there that day. Your hard work kept guests refreshed and ready for more.
As we look ahead, we have more big events on the horizon. Oktoberfest is just around the corner and we need a ton of help to make it happen. We’ll need 80 beer pourers on Saturday, October 8th alone! If you haven’t signed up for an Oktoberfest shift yet, please head to portal and grab when you can. Before you know it we’ll be swapping pumpkins for wreaths, and in the blink of an eye will be tossing out the wreaths and dropping a Peep on New Year’s Eve. There’s never been a better time to get involved with everything ArtsQuest does around the calendar, and I hope I’ll get the privilege of working with you soon.
Thank you for everything that you do,
Cory Stevens
Volunteer & Internship Programs Manager
