The coronavirus pandemic has claimed another local event – the 20th Yachats Celtic Music Festival scheduled for November.
In addition to its roster of well-known Celtic singers and musicians, the festival has also offered food, whiskey tastings, workshops and more and is a key attraction of the fall cultural and tourism season in Yachats.
The board of directors of Polly Plumb Productions, which oversees the festival and several other Yachats cultural events, made the announcement Wednesday “with much reluctance and regret.”
It cited “complications and uncertainties” with COVID-19 issues and comes on the heels of last weekend’s surge in Lincoln County coronavirus cases.
The board had previously said it was “maintaining a holding pattern” on the festival because of the pandemic.
“I’m sad, of course,” said music director Stephen Farish said Wednesday. “It boils down to people’s attitudes about where this whole thing is going.”
Farish said he notified the scheduled high-level Celtic performers from across North America that the event was cancelled. It would have been the festival’s 20th year.
“Everybody understands; we’re not the first venue to do this,” Farish said. Some performance deposits “remain to be worked out,” but no other monetary penalties would be incurred.
Farish and the board recently conducted an email survey to determine public interest in the three-day event, which had been scheduled for Nov. 13-15.
“We had a lot of positive response from folks, mostly out of the area, which is where our audience comes from,” he said.
Of the 45 responses to the survey, 30 were unreservedly positive; eight were “maybes,” and seven were in the “definitely no” column, Farish said.
“There’s no way we can hold the festival unless we can fill the hall at the Commons,” Farish said last month, speaking of the festival’s main night. And the multipurpose room – which has a capacity of 250 people — couldn’t be filled unless social distancing guidelines were to be lifted by then, which now seems unlikely.
