The Leavenworth Community Coffeehouse needs volunteers to reopen!
Contact: Cindy Rietveldt, Coffeehouse Media Contact - 509-548-7374

Since 1992, Leavenworth Community Coffeehouse, with the ongoing support of local businesses, artists and a crew of volunteers, has provided an intimate venue for audiences of all ages to enjoy a great variety of acoustic musicians in the Upper Wenatchee Valley. Many local artists and performers from throughout the Northwest have appeared there and touring musicians from all over the country have made this small stage one of their regular stops. Listeners have had the opportunity to bring their families to hear great instrumentalists, singer-songwriters, blues, reggae, zydeco, mariachi and more.

But each year it has become harder to find people willing and able to do the various tasks that keep the program running. The Coffeehouse took a hiatus during the fall, winter and spring of 2007 and 2008. The dwindling number of volunteers knew that it was time for a boost of energy, a real change, to keep the concert series alive. And we felt we had found it when we were offered a new home by Icicle Arts at the Barn Beach Reserve. The Barn Beach Reserve is shared by a nature center, the Upper Valley Museum at Leavenworth as well as Icicle Arts. They have just finished the work on a multipurpose building, the "Barn," and have invited the Leavenworth Community Coffeehouse to use the new facility for performances. The building is handicapped accessible, there is a parking lot and it sits in what is probably the most beautiful setting with the most spectacular view of the Wenatchee River in all of Leavenworth!

For our first musical event in our new location we partnered with Leavenworth Spring Bird Fest in hosting nationally known performer Dana Lyons on May 16th.

All winter, while waiting for the completion of the new facility, the Coffeehouse continued to hear from the audience asking about Friday night shows and from the musicians who wanted to return. Now we are looking forward to unpacking the wonderful collection of handmade mugs, plugging in the coffeemaker and setting out the plates of cookies. People can visit our new website: leavenworthcoffeehouse.org. But there is still in great need of more volunteers to help plan and produce the Annual Acoustic Music Festival in August and the regular concert season that will begin on in September. Friday, May 2 at 7:00 is a chance for anyone who values and has missed the Leavenworth Community Coffeehouse to tour the new building and to help take on some of the of the work to schedule, publicize and set up for performances that will keep the music coming.