The Woodland Sky Native American Dance Company is set to perform at this year’s Beethoven and Banjos music festival. (Courtesy photo)

MARQUETTE — This year the Beethoven and Banjos music festival musically celebrates the watersheds of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the Earth with a program that combines classical, folk, and Indigenous music and dance.

According to a press release, musicians from Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Mississippi River, Lake Champlain, and Atlantic Ocean watersheds will come together for this one of a kind collaboration.

Concerts are presented this year in collaboration with the Woodland Sky Native American Dance Company and the Aeolus Quartet. Woodland Sky consists of Native American dancers from the Ojibwe, Sioux, Potawatomi and Apache tribes.

This award-winning group portrays all styles of dancing in this region which include traditional, fancy, jingle, grass and hoop.

The Aeolus Quartet was formed in 2008 with a vision to share the permanent power of the string quartet repertoire with wide-ranging audiences. Based in New York City, the quartet brings an equal dedication to all of its artistic endeavors, placing new and lesser known works side-by-side with the time honored masterworks.

The festival also welcomes back soprano Mary Bonhag, multi-instrumentalist Laurel Premo and artistic director and bassist Evan Premo. The music will include compositions and arrangements by Evan and Laurel Premo as well as traditional Native American song with dance interpretations by Woodland Sky.

Programs will be presented in Marquette, Crystal Falls and Houghton.

At 7 p.m. Thursday, bring chairs for an outdoor concert held at the Elwood Mattson Lower Harbor Park in Marquette.

At 8 p.m. Saturday, the group will perform at the Crystal Theatre in Crystal Falls, and on Sunday at 2 p.m., the concert will be held at the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts on Michigan Tech campus in Houghton.

The Rozsa Center performance will also be live streamed and available for viewing on the Rozsa Center and Beethoven and Banjos Facebook pages.

Beethoven and Banjos music festival is sponsored by Northwoods Music Collaborative with generous donations from Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Midwest, Marquette West Rotary, Superior Watershed Partnership, Community Foundation of Marquette County, and the Keweenaw Co-op as well as many generous individuals and businesses.

The news release said: “Because of this, we can offer our events to our communities as ‘come as you are, pay what you can.'”

For more information and details about this festival, visit www.beethovenandbanjos.org or the Beethoven and Banjos Facebook page.