Three movies, three entertainers and three ways to make miracles

This year’s Festival format includes live concerts by popular local performers: contemporary folk/rock singer/composer Luke Brindley, Gypsy jazz violinist Daisy Castro and Grammy-nominated Progressive Hip-Hop artist Christylez Bacon Those attending will want to arrive by 5:30 p.m. when the performances begin, Brindley on Thursday, Castro on Friday and Bacon on Saturday.

Brindley has been a favorite artist-about-town since arriving from New Jersey to launch Jammin’ Java in Vienna with his brothers. A music school by day, it becomes a club/cafe by evening featuring established musicians and rising talents. Brindley has received several WAMMIES for his albums. When he is not performing solo on his acoustic guitar at area venues, he is often heard with his trio, Deep River.

Daisy Castro was a classical violin student until she attended a Festival Django Reinhardt in France. Hopelessly in love with Gypsy music from that day on, she cut her first recording, “Gypsy Moth,” at age eleven and has been dazzling listeners ever since.

“At the Comcast Festival, my Gypsy Moth Trio will insert a Middle Eastern twist into the Gypsy jazz and we’ll also play waltzes,” she said. “Some of the numbers will be covers and others are original. I love to create music and art and look forward to my role as Strathmore Artist in Residence next spring.”

Christylez (chris-styles) Bacon graduated from the Duke Ellington School with a major in visual arts, painting and sculpture. He now utilizes that training to promote cross-cultural education and acceptance through music. Self-taught on a variety of instruments, he writes songs in a mixture of styles, including classical, jazz, salsa, hip-hop and bhangra from the Punjab area of India.

“I grew up listening to my mother’s huge collection of records and I could always see the artistic connection between the structures of classical and hip-hop music,” he said. “My first instrument was the human beatbox, which is making drum sounds with the mouth. When you have no money, you work with what you have. In school I played bass drum in the marching band and learned to play the keyboard by reading books on chord structure and music theory. Today I play the acoustic guitar, the ukulele and a number of percussion instruments, including the West African djembe drum.”

Christylez promotes his Hip-Hop music at the Washington Sound Museum, clinics and concerts at such venues as the Washington National Cathedral, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, where he was the first featured Hip-Hop artist, and the Kennedy Center. There he was commissioned to compose and orchestrate a concerto for a 12-piece orchestra. Some of the classical Instruments he incorporates into his work are the bass, cello and violin, often adding the saxophone for a jazzy effect.

As a Strathmore Resident Artist, he collaborated with mentors Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer on their Grammy-nominated album, “Banjo to Beatbox.” He terms his own debut album, “Advanced Artistry,” as “progressive hip-hop” for its fusion of instrumentation and world music genres.

“Cathy pulled out her banjo and we jammed on it,” he said. “I learned a lot from those cats about giving children lessons they could take away. Right now I’m mixing classical Hindustani music from northern India with hip-hop and am working on another album, ‘Hip-Hop Unplugged,’ with electronic instrumentation. It’s scheduled for a fall release.

“I love performing live and look forward to my two sets at the Comcast Festival. I’ll bring along a girl sax player so we can mix hip-hop with jazz.”