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Openers for Ray Charles at the 1989 Richmond International Festival of Music included Ghanian percussionist Okyerema Asante and Richmond’s Plunky & Oneness.
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An undated floating performance at the Big Gig
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Willie Nelson performed at the Big Gig in 1990.
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Latin artists from the 2000 edition of the festival
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An undated photo of a Big Gig crowd on Brown’s Island
What began as the Richmond International Festival of Music at twilight on Sunday, July 3, 1988 — announced by the pealing bells of the Carillon and answered by the city’s churches, on a stage installed amid the Byrd Park Fountain Lake for the Richmond Symphony and the United Nations Choir, performing for an estimated audience of 20,000 — ended on the evening of Friday, July 15, 2004, as the Summer City Festival on Brown’s Island with the renowned Richmond-based Plunky & Oneness opening for Earth, Wind & Fire before an audience of 6,000.
In between, the event created by Downtown Presents… (an antecedent of Venture Richmond) transformed into the Big Gig from 1990 to 2002. But because Milwaukee copyrighted the same title for its festival, Richmond’s event was rebranded as the prosaic Summer City Festival.
Yet through name changes, sponsor roulette, shifting of music genres, the comingling of big name acts with locals known and not, and the downsizing of an event calendar from a three-week run to just five days, the series persisted by casting a massive bouquet of music across the city. Performances occurred in neighborhood parks and the formal settings of the Carpenter Center (now the Carpenter Theatre at the Dominion Energy Center) and the Mosque (renamed Altria Theater), in downtown’s plazas, the gardens of The Valentine and Agecroft, stores, street corners, and the City Hall Observation Deck. And most of it was free.
The whole concept came from the restless mind of Downtown Presents… dynamo Nina Abady. Christina Risatti then served as the organization’s events coordinator. Soon, she’d have her hands full.
Abady eventually called on her friend Richard Koehler, chairman of Virginia Commonwealth University’s music department.
“They hatched this idea together,” Risatti recalls with some amusement. “Spoleto was definitely their model,” referring to the annual springtime performing arts festival of Charleston, South Carolina, which presented an example for a destination event that stoked the creative imaginations of planners across the country, including Abady.
Risatti explains her own initial skepticism, saying that, unlike Richmond at the time, “downtown Charleston is small, walkable, nice for tourism.”
The event, too, needed to avoid conflicting with June Jubilee and the Richmond Greek Festival. This placed it in hot and humid July, a time when many people preferred vacations to outdoor music events.
Regardless, with great ambition and a cumbersome, world-embracing name, the Richmond International Festival of Music launched around Fountain Lake. “Nina wanted this big, splashy thing” to inaugurate the event, Risatti says. This became literal.
Abady originally envisioned a floating stage, but it was impractical, even with the backing of Circuit City. She called Fred Brumbach of Backstage Inc. for assistance. Not knowing the depth of Fountain Lake, Brumbach jumped in to find that the water was waist-high and that the floor was level enough to install scaffolding to support a stage.
Former Richmond Symphony Director Jacques Houtmann returned from France to conduct in shirtsleeves. He expressed some anxiety about the water stage, fearing he might fall off. Abady counseled him to remain standing.
A Dancing Waters mechanism spouted jets that pranced to the music of Shostakovich, Brahms and Borodin.
The festival chorus with the United Nations Choir, dressed in the garb of their native lands, gave full-throated renditions of popular songs.
Mild evening weather drew crowds that clustered along the Downtown Expressway overpasses and filled the slopes surrounding the lake. Risatti remembers, “We didn’t know if anybody would come. We didn’t have any plans for parking. We hired three off-duty cops for security, but the third one never showed up because he got stuck in traffic.”
The three weeks of music commenced, with afternoon and downtown lunchtime shows and evening performances.
Performances around town included multigenre guitarist Chet Atkins; New Orleans jazz clarinetist Alvin Batiste and pianist Ellis Marsalis (only 300 attended their Carpenter Center date); pianist and composer Marvin Hamlisch, presenting the works of Scott Joplin; Rudolf Nureyev, performing with the Ballet Monde of Paris and the Festival Orchestra at the Mosque; the Theatre IV-produced “Ain’t Misbehavin’” at The Empire (now Virginia Repertory Theatre’s November Theatre); and a series of Bach chamber pieces, cantatas and organ recitals produced by downtown’s Centenary United Methodist Church. The grand finale on Brown’s Island provided the “ooh, ahh” factor with the Festival Orchestra and Chorus and fireworks.
Risatti chuckles about the condition of Brown’s Island at the time. “Oh, it was a piece of dirt,” she says. “There was nothing there; we had to bring power, water and everything else. Same thing with Fountain Lake.”
The shows went on, with better parking arrangements and shuttles. Debates continued about the festival’s scattershot offerings.
“Can the homefolk absorb 65 concerts in 16 days?” posed Richmond News Leader critic Francis Church in July 1989. He contrasted the citywide performances across the spectrum of rock, jazz, bluegrass, classical and folk by high-caliber players with audience numbers that were less than ideal. “The festival suffers from a serious identity crisis and needs more focus,” Church observed.
A 54-member advisory and support group called the Keyboard was formed to assist with the artists and boost attendance.
And then there was the name.
“It was a mouthful,” Risatti concurs. “And if you shorten it, it’s RIFOM. What does that even mean?” With the help of the Martin Agency, it rebranded to the Big Gig.
A poster for the 10th annual Big Gig in 1997
The 1990 iteration proved to be a watershed for the series, with headliners including the velvet-voiced Lou Rawls; South African trumpeter and composer of the musical “Sarafina!” Hugh Masekela, supported by the Women of the Calabash; Willie Nelson with Shelby Lynne in a poorly designed concert at The Diamond (he gave the show’s $5,052 proceeds to the Central Virginia Food Bank); gospel great Al Green; and jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson.
Jazz pianist icon Marian McPartland performed through a cloudburst at Festival Park by the Coliseum. She invited the remaining audience members under the tent, and some spectators huddled beneath the piano. She played an extra half hour. The New Orleans Rebirth Brass Band led a parade down Monument Avenue.
In 1999, Tito Puente and his Latin Jazz Ensemble with the Richmond Symphony caused an overflow crowd of nearly 10,000 at Tredegar Iron Works. Many looked on from the grassy bluffs. Closer spectators, some waving Puerto Rican flags, danced in the rain.
Abady’s 1993 passing put Risatti in charge of what became Citycelebrations. After 18 years with the organization and a decade of leadership, she concluded her tenure at the helm, telling the Richmond Free Press she wanted to go out “with a big round number.”
Members of the numerous Richmond bands that participated in the festival over the years are still performing, from the Awareness Art Ensemble to Bio Ritmo, Roger Carroll to Janet Martin, David Esleck to the Ululating Mummies, the Oregon Hill Funk All-Stars to Ban Caribe, and many more.
The Big Gig, rather than ending, in a sense, multiplied, by laying the groundwork for the Richmond Folk Festival, the Richmond Jazz and Music Festival at Maymont, and neighborhood concerts including Bellevue’s Porchella.
As Nina Abady understood, music is a natural resource.
