With flutist Claire Chase as this year’s music director, the California festival highlighted female composers and an array of talented performers in programming that, while admirably experimental, tended toward the monotonous.

Kid Rock, Nickelback, Lynyrd Skynyrd and other country music artists are performing at the festival. Hastings is one of 10 stops the festival is making across the U.S. — but the only Michigan stop. The festival is happening at the Barry Expo Center, 1350 M-37, on Friday, June 13, and Saturday, June 14.

“You must get drunk without stopping. But what with? On wine, poetry, or virtue, as you please. But get drunk,” wrote Charles Baudelaire more than 150 years ago. Add to that list “music” and “lack of sleep,” and that pretty much sums up your average Boston Early Music Festival.

Conductor and pianist Andrew Litton led the Grant Park Orchestra in the performance of "Rhapsody in Blue" Wednesday night. The program also included "Three Latin Ameriacn Dances"

This year's Ojai festival, led by super-flutist Claire Chase, brilliantly featured Anaheim native Susie Ibarra, who just won the Pulitzer Prize for music.

Guest conductor Andrew Litton devised a sufficiently show-stopping opener on Wednesday by conducting and playing “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Harm reductions initiatives are becoming more commonplace at major music festivals, both through partnerships with festival organizers as well as volunteer efforts done without explicit permission.

Like the word-of-mouth holler hootenanny Kickin’ It On The Creek that hosted Tyler Childers near Irvine several times in the late 2010s, another Kentucky festival just north of the Cumberland Gap has become a launchpad for up-and-coming Appalachian musicians like Sierra Ferrell, Charles Wesley Godwin, Morgan Wade and The Red Clay Strays.