The Seldovia Summer Solstice Music Festival is a 3 day event celebrating summer with live performances, artist-led workshops, open mic events, vendor booths and bonfires that takes place in the heart of Seldovia on an old cannery dock. The event is organized and coordinated by the Seldovia Arts Council, part of the City of Seldovia. Council members Suzie Stranik and Margie McCord talked with KBBI about the history of the festival and what it will offer this year. Both women have been residents of Seldovia for almost 50 years.
2026 marks the 25th anniversary of the event that has transformed quite a bit since it first started with a proposal by Susan Mumma in 2001. At that time, Mumma directed what was then called the Seldovia Folk Festival for the purpose of providing entertainment for the community as well as an educational tool and networking “vehicle for musicians from around the state” but not as much as a tourist attraction as it is now, according to festival history composed by Mumma. Now the 11 members of the arts council each take on parts of festival features such as transportation, food coordination, stage construction, audio management and more.
The festival now takes place at an outdoor venue on the waterfront of Seldovia right where the state Tustumena ferry docks. One of the major changes this year is the transition from a temporary stage to a permanent set up, as McCord explains:
“…this was the site of one of the old canneries, and we still have the cement padding there from the old cannery. So we have a dance stage, we have that off-set. This new canopy that we have, it was donated to us four years ago. It is acoustically just beautiful. The sound is so much better. We took apart the floating canopy on a stage that came from Halibut Cove. It's been taken off its pontoons and made into the all the wood is repurposed and made into a stage, a permanent stage on the cement. It's right within the canopy, the clamshell, whatever you want to call it, and it even has a riser for the drum set. So, it's going to be really awesome.”
This year there will be four headline bands: Tumble Down House, Dirty Cello, John Brothers Piano Company and the Copper River Band. Also performing will be: Sweet Pow, Hope Cassidy, Eclectic Acoustic, Vik and the Vapor Rubs and Kendra Leigh Highwater. More descriptive details and sound clips from all of the headline bands are available on the music festival website. Event tickets and all additional information is available there also: www.seldoviaartscouncil.org.
Events begin on Thursday with musicians playing enroute to Seldovia on the Alaska Marine Highway’s Tustumena Ferry and the main stage concert will begin at 5 PM. On Saturday there will be a coffee and song circle in the morning, workshops with the performers from noon to 4PM and another main stage concert that will begin at 5. Specific details on what the workshops will offer is available on the Seldovia Arts Council website www.seldoviaartscouncil.org. These will include sound healing, a brass and woodwind clinic, singing with confidence, acoustic guitar construction and songwriting.
Stranik and McCord explained another new change this year:
“The other big thing is that we just received a $5,000 grant from Homer Foundation to help with travel and give our non-headliners a bit of a stipend for the very first time. We're really happy to be able to do that with the help of Homer Foundation.
In the past, we've only paid a performance fee for our headliners and other bands, local bands or bands that were in the area touring that had applied for our festival. We would pay their round trip across Kachemak Bay, we would house them for the three nights of the festival, and we would feed them two meals, but that was it. This year we'll be able to provide a small stipend for each performer.”
For people interested in attending the festival, the board members recommend camping opportunities at Outer Beach or the Seldovia RV park. There are some AirBnB’s available in Seldovia, also. Travel is available by the state ferry or the 45 minute Seldovia Bay Ferry, owned and operated by the Seldovia Village Tribe.
Additional upcoming events in Seldovia this summer include: Songs on the Slough in July and a Guitar Masters concert in August. Also coming up in the first week of July is the Seldovia Drama Camp, a collaboration between Pier One Theatre and the Seldovia Arts Council.
Reporting from Homer, this is Emilie Springer.
