Fest and Fair inspire passion

From The Register-Guard
By Mark Baker

"Well, it's kind of like the Bach Festival - but without clothes."

That's what Jeanette Pilak, former marketing director at the Hult Center, told a friend years ago who had come all the way from Georgia to attend the Oregon Bach Festival, when he asked about the Oregon Country Fair, where she planned to take him next.

The difference in wardrobes was the only hint he got.

So says Ruthie Manley, a longtime artist liaison with the Bach Festival, who is also a lover of the country fair. Manley thinks that sums up the difference pretty well between the two longtime festivals born a year apart.

"I am quite passionate about both," Manley says. "But I think the country fair has drawn a more diverse crowd than anything. It truly lifts my spirits because it's such a welcoming crowd. I ... just ... love it."

They are at opposite extremes, these two very local scenes. Two festivals that collide at this time every year and are as different as cuff links and cow pies.

Although most would say there's much more than occasional nudity that separates the country fair, born in 1969, and the Bach Festival, born in 1970, Manley's anecdote makes sense to those who know both festivals well.

"They're way different styles of events," says John Steinmetz of Altadena, Calif., a pony-tailed bassoon player with the Bach Festival orchestra for two decades running who also enjoys the country fair. "But I think the friendly personality of Eugene seems to imbue both of them."

To find out, we spent half of the day Friday at the country fair, and the other half at the Bach Festival. Here are some of our observations:

"Fairy" dust and powdered wigs

You'd have to wonder what Johann Sebastian Bach would have thought about "fairy" dust. You know, the stuff you sprinkle in the palm of your hand at the country fair before making a wish and blowing it into the air.

Of course, Bach would have wanted to move under the falling dust, so as to be sprinkled and sparkled because, "it is fantastic to do this alone or with a friend," according to Fantasy Lane Copper Fairies, which sells the magical dust at $4 for a large vial.

Besides, what's a few more sprinkles and sparkles when you wear a powdered wig?

Yes, we believe that Bach would have fit right in at the Veneta-area fair, which attracts up to 20,000 visitors a day during its three-day reign every July.

If the Bach Festival is an internationally renowned mix of classical music in rich colors, the country fair is an alternative organ recital gone mad.

If the Bach Festival has the Bach Boutique in the lobby of the Hult Center, selling T-shirts that say "Go for Baroque," the country fair has a "Rumor Control Board" where fair-goers can scribble things such as, "The Bush twins have been seen in the craft lot."

If the Bach Festival is a place to hone your appreciation of classical music and study one of the great composers ever, the country fair offers the tangy smells of burning incense and marijuana, and a place to connect your spirit with the counterculture world of another time.

"Stick together"

George Evano, director of communications for the Bach Festival, says education is a main component of the festival. But what of the educational element at the country fair?

How about Ken Kesey's Merry Prankster pal Ken Babbs reciting his late friend's words of wisdom on the fair's main stage?

"Ken Kesey said, `If you don't know where you're going, you have to stick together just in case someone gets there.' "

Or how about this one?

"The thing that sets people apart is their optimism. They sincerely believe that mercy comes before justice; that the carrot is better than the stick; and that love is the only compass you can trust to guide you down the mean mainstream of money-mad America. One other thing: Don't bug the fuzz. Be who you are, and what you are is free."

With that, the sun-splashed crowd in front of the stage, where Lost Creek - also known as the "Merry Gangsters," the Portland-based band of Babbs' son, Eli - was about to continue playing, broke into a frenzy.

"The country fair is special because the people hiding under the asphalt come out and show themselves with complete freedom," Babbs says after his spoken-word rendition.

Although he says he listens to KWAX, the UO's classical radio station, every morning, Babbs says he is not a regular attendee at the Bach Festival.

David Rutz is, though.

"It's wonderful," says Rutz, who moved to Springdale, Utah, four years ago after living in Eugene for 26, as he stood outside Beall Hall. "And it's a wonderful time of year in Eugene. I love all kinds of music."

Rutz says he's been to the country fair twice.

And how does the music there compare to the Bach Festival? "I think they're different ends of the spectrum," Rutz says, laughing.

"I like the crazy people"

At Beall Hall on Friday, Helmuth Rilling, the Bach Festival's co-founder and conductor, leads the day's cantata, a musical composition with vocal solos, choruses and instrumental accompaniment, in front of an audience of about 300. The theme of this particular Bach cantata is baptism, Rilling explains.

The choir stands and begins singing. They sound much like a church choir.

The cantata includes solo performances by several singers and musicians, including Rilling's daughter, Rahel, a violinist visiting from Germany. After each brief piece, Rilling explains the meaning.

"We are talking about the dove," he says, "but we are also talking about the spirit. This is the most important thing to Bach - he's talking about the spirit of the baptism (on the Jordan River)."

Rahel Rilling says she regularly attends the country fair - where a spirit of another kind flies free - when she comes to Eugene for the Bach Festival each year. "I like the crazy people and the different styles. It's just very relaxed and laid back," she says.

Do you have anything like the Oregon Country Fair in Germany? "Yes," she says. "We have festivals like that, but this is more of a hippie festival."

That it is.

"It could work"

Marga Larson, a Eugene accountant and Bach Festival board member, loves both events equally.

"It's the sense of community that attracts me," she says of the country fair while standing in the Hult Center lobby waiting for "The Goldberg Variations Reimagined" to begin.

Of the Bach Festival, she says, "There isn't anything else of this caliber in this area. It's just amazing to 
me."

Diane Retallack, director of the Eugene Concert Choir, and her husband, Greg Retallack, a UO professor of geology, also regularly attend both festivals.

"I've been trying to get a booth out there, but they keep turning me down," Greg Retallack, a native of Australia, says of the country fair. He wants to sell "fossils of the Zodiac," he says. "They said you have to keep applying, keep applying, keep applying."

Should the two festivals unite as one?

"I don't know," Diane Retallack says.

"It could work," her husband says.

All you'd need is a tie-dyed tux.