What the heck is Soundcheck?

Soundcheck is a festival dedicated to celebrating our local performers, artists and makers. Soundcheck events happen at a range of fantastic venues around town. Our featured events are financially and logistically supported by the festival while other events are coordinated by individual artists and venues who want to take part in the fun. The festival supports and is supported by the Port Townsend Creative District.

A Brief History

In 2019, the first Soundcheck was pulled together in short order in the months leading up to the inaugural THING festival. Gage Pacifera saw a void of organizing where a locally-focused festival should be and decided to step in and take on the task of properly introducing a bunch of early-arriving THING-goers to the Port Townsend arts scene.

The festival focused on local music in local venues, featured a songwriter showcase and had an awesome bus that shuttled THING campers and locals between venues. On the night before THING, venues were packed and brimming with energy created by our local performers and both out-of-town and local audience members. The Songwriter Showcase was a joyous and uplifting celebration of our town’s up-and-coming musicians. The bus was a hit and was enjoyed by hundreds of people.

Since then, the festival has grown to include a multitude of new events, created vital partnerships with local organizations like KPTZ and Key City Public Theatre, and has been taken under the wing of the Port Townsend Creative District.

Huge kudos go out to the first-year organizers: Gage Pacifera, Nate Malgrem, Dominic Svornich, Rowan Katz, Lauren and Matt (of the now-defunct Phosphene), Frank DePalma, Sindi Pladsen, Sam Maynard, Chen Pollina and Kiyota Sage.

The Creative District

Soundcheck and the Port Townsend Creative District pair perfectly together. The District aims to help support year-round opportunities for local artists and the local art scene by connecting audiences with artists, marketing our art community, providing resources toamplify artists’ access to creativity and tools, and putting artists in the center of our cultural economy. That aligns pretty darn well with Soundcheck's mission of showcasing and providing financial compensation to local artists.

The Creative District also offers a support network and funding for district-centric projects like Soundcheck. Through generous sponsorships from local businesses, grant funds and other organizational and community support, the District provides direct monetary support to dozens of local and regional artists through this collaboration. How’s that for a win-win? 

To learn more about the Port Townsend Creative District, check outptcreativedistrict.org.

Partnerships

Soundcheck has so many amazing organizers and partners who are making this festival possible this year!

This year’s group of organizers includes:

• Gage Pacifera, Harmonic Northwest (chair)
• Holly Erickson, PT Main Street (event coordinator)
• Mari Mullen, PT Main Street
• Eryn Smith, PT Main Street
• Mark Hardy, Salish Sound
• Jesse Watson, artist at large
• Paris Jade, Strait Up Magazine/Sky Dancers
• Jaclyn Connor, Uptown Pub
• Denise Winter, Key City Theatre

KPTZ is a media sponsor and a founding partner of the Port Townsend Creative District, which includes KPTZ’s new home and beautiful setting for the THING festival, Fort Worden

Port Townsend Main Street provides so much tangible support through staffing, coordination, support, connection, and accommodation with their other events (most notably Concerts on the Dock) that it is hard to thank them enough.

Salish Sound provides expert audio engineering and well-equipped A/V services for many of our featured events.

Key City Public Theatre has been actively engaged in the planning effort, and is very generously providing venue space with beverage service to boot.

Frank DePalma from MyCityScene/Totera Systems and Gage Pacifera from Harmonic Northwest are making sure all the technical and marketing components of the festival are in good working condition.

Media sponsors include the Port Townsend Leader, the Chamber of Jefferson County, Strait Up Magazine, Seattle Theatre Group and KPTZ.

2023 Festival Artist: Michelle Hagewood

Our 2023 festival artist is the brilliantly imaginative Michelle Hagewood. Michelle is an artist, illustrator and animator who works in several mediums including painting, sculpture and animation.

Michelle pitched the concept and created the original art for the festival. She says this about her piece, Setting Forth:

"As a community we move as in one ship, catapulted into new ideas from our common spaces and setting."

To learn more about Michelle and her work, visit michellehagewood.com.