Young Musicians Hope to Connect With Audiences at Music Festival

By Lily Spinda

One of Westchester’s biggest music festivals allows families and friends to jam out to original music. It also gives three Westchester-based bands the opportunity to perform in front of thousands of new people.

The 17^th annual Pleasantville Music Festival presented by Northwell Health returns this Saturday with 18 bands across three different stages over more than nine rockin’ hours.

Aspiring young musicians and bands in and around the Hudson Valley competed in a Battle of the Bands competition this spring in front of music industry professionals for the chance to open the festival. With 16 finalists over two weekends, each band competed by performing original music at The Garage at Lucy’s in Pleasantville.

Opening the main stage at 12:30 p.m. will be Summer Fling, a conglomerate of young jazz students including vocalist Eddie Kam, electric guitarist Evan Macaluso, bass guitarist Dani Johnson and trumpeter James “Jimbo” Worsey, along with a string of guest instrumentalists.

For the band, winning the competition means new experiences including reaching new audiences.

“I’m so excited to play for people who have never (heard of us) or have no idea who we are,” Kam said. “I would say, by far, this will be the biggest thing we’ve ever done. Like we are not going to be able to process this until afterward.”

Made up of current and former jazz students in New York City, Summer Fling is a fusion of classic and soft rock and funk with influences of jazz. The band’s musical influences include David Bowie, Sting, Billy Joel, Talking Heads and Sammy Rae & The Friends.

Originally, the band was a “summer project,” hence its name.

Only Kam and Macaluso have known each other since middle school after meeting each other from a production of “The Wizard of Oz,” where Kam played the Scarecrow and Macaluso was the Tin Man. The band evolved, by playing shows in Larchmont and on the street corners to various clubs in New York City.

Their “yacht-rock” style of music is influenced by their music education. The band’s goal is to be a source of “escapism” for listeners, which is found through their carefree tunes.

“A huge part of our kind of music styling is just the silliness aspects to not taking ourselves too seriously, the having fun (and) trying to kind of be a distraction for people,” Kam said.

Electric guitarist, Evan Macaluso, confirmed the next steps for the band involve recording a new album and possibly touring.

“The opportunities feel a lot more optimistic about things because this feels like a really, really healthy and great push, and it’s really exciting,” Kam added.

On Saturday, the music doesn’t just start with Summer Fling on the Main Stage. Hunter Road and Ursula Hansberry will be kicking off the Party Stage and the Chill Tent, respectively, at noon.

Hunter Road is a four-member band, all graduates of Westlake or Valhalla high school, rocking their way around the Hudson Valley. It consists of Joe Chandler, bass player Mike Goiricelaya, drummer Luca Sica and guitarist Abe Sanchez.

Originally, the group started with Chandler and Goiricelaya, who have known each other since middle school. Later on, Sica joined when he responded to their flyer searching for a drummer.

Sanchez said he was mopping the floor of the deli he worked at when Goiricelaya called asking if he could play because they had a show in an hour. Sanchez learned their entire set in under an hour and officially joined the band.

Hunter Road, who will open the Party Stage at noon, formed only last year, but this was the second time they had entered the festival’s Battle of the Bands competition. They are already recording an album and will be releasing new singles soon.

“We auditioned a year before with a different lineup, a different guitarist and they put us in for the Chill Tent audition,” Chandler said. “We were not a Chill Tent kind of band.”

However, that didn’t stop their determination to rock. They auditioned again this year, and were shocked that they were one of the winners.

Hunter Road promises to provide high energy. With musical inspirations such as Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Aerosmith, the group describes their style as hard rock, with a hint of grunge and blues.

Ursula Hansberry has been singing for as long as she can remember. The Dobbs Ferry native grew up listening to Radiohead, Jeff Buckley and Dave Matthews but describes her music style to be a collection of “everything” from alternative Americana to back road country with influences of pop.

Hansberry recently graduated from Baruch College, majoring in management of musical enterprises and a double minor in entertainment/intellectual property law and English.

The singer was at work when she received the news that she was the opener for the Chill Tent. She remembers waiting in anticipation until she was on break to return the call.

“I really went in there with as much gusto as I possibly could,” Hansberry recalled about the competition.

The singer-songwriter has performed at various locations in the Hudson Valley, including Tarrytown Music Hall and Darryl’s House in Pawling.

Hansberry started songwriting when she was 14 and finds bliss through finding the right lyrics.

“It’s not full songs, it’s moments when you can pull together something that flows in such a way that it couldn’t be better,” she explained. “That’s the best feeling of anything.”

Each song has a “personal edge” or emotion connected to Hansberry’s life as she describes her songs as stories. Currently, her writing reflects the new beginnings and uncertainty of life and her budding career.

“I think right now, my music is something I’m figuring out as I’m figuring out my life,” Hansberry said. “It’s a lot of experimentation. I’m confronting my own emotions and feelings more than I used to.”

She admitted to stage fright when she first started performing.

“I wasn’t sure if I was going to be performing anymore because I had such stage fright,” Hansberry acknowledged. But she convinced herself to get through it and it became a bit easier for her.

For her upcoming performance, Hansberry’s main hope is that people “jive” to her music in any way they want to interpret it.

“I want people to feel themselves,” she said. “I want people to feel what they want out of what I write and to take whatever meaning they can get from it.”

While she has no major career plans, at this point Hanbserry hopes to make enough to survive off of making music.

“If my music makes someone feel something, or they appreciate it or it’s stuck in their head, that’s like the biggest joy in my life,” Hansberry said.

Gates open to the Pleasantville Music Festival at Parkway Field on Marble Avenue at 11 a.m. with music starting at noon. Tickets are available through Ticketweb and the festival box office located in the Pleasantville Rec Center outside the field at 48 Marble Ave.

For more information about the event and links to the performers, visit www.pleasantvillemusicfestival.com.