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The Lehigh Valley is home to manufacturers of world renowned musical instruments, world class concert venues, and the largest free music festival in the country.

Today on Lehigh Valley rising we're taking a closer look at the instrument makers and event planners who make the Lehigh Valley a great place to make music.

Let's get started.

The wind Creek Event Center in Bethlehem brings big names and big bucks to the Lehigh Valley.

We recently visited the Event Center to learn how this small venue attracts big talent music evokes so much emotion empathy, anger, pride, excitement.

To be able to bring those emotions to the public and be a part of that is is one of the biggest parts of my job that I find the most gratitude from.

I'm Jeff Traynor, one of the CO owners of the wind Creek Event Center in Bethlehem, Paul Sean, the director of marketing for the wind Creek Event Center.

From the moment the show gets booked and comes across my desk, it's my job to kind of facilitate the advertising process from start to finish.

I take a look at who that act is and who their audiences and from that point forward, I kind of make decisions on where I want to go with the advertising campaigns.

I've been doing this for just over seven years now.

previously worked with Live Nation when I had worked at a Live Nation was doing maybe 2025 shows a year coming here we do anywhere between 90 to 100 shows a year plus all of our events and sometimes we do these offshoots and everything like that.

Well, the first few concerts that I went to were in Northampton here at the Roxy theater.

Saw Aerosmith there saw Billy Joel there even saw kiss there in a 500 seat facility when you're as close as we are to New York City, and then Philadelphia as well as surrounding areas like the Poconos and and going to Bucks County in different other areas.

We are in the prime spot.

And I think the Lehigh Valley is maybe one of the best locations in the country.

I don't own the facility.

We have a lease here.

We did a long term lease over 50 years from the wind Creek Casino.

And I'm probably the only guy maybe in the country that's using the name of the casino, but yet are privately owned.

And what that allows us to do is we're able to get pretty good buys on bands knowing that it's independently owned versus owned by the casino this is an area that we have within our sweet area that shows all the different bands that have come here every show we date it it's it's put in the back for them to sign if you look at some of these out here like Blink 182 Diana Ross, you know who's been here, Howie Mendell, Bob Saget.

One of my favorites, Hollywood Vampires.

It's Joe Perry from Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp, you come over to this side.

Criss Angel is become a friend of mine.

So it's no ride here of doing about close to 1000 concerts.

Our facility when we design this was laid out with live nations help that we would have about 2000 seats.

This is a view from our suite area.

Basically the suites are two different sections, one of which is more like movie theater seating, which is where we're at right now.

The other is on the wing over there.

As you get close to the stage as are fantastic seats.

You're about 135 feet from the stage right here, which is not very far to see a concert there's a good view when you look at the big ones like a Janet Jackson when they run a tour, they enjoy playing these small venues where you really can see the fans I have people flying in from Europe waiting in line a day ahead of time, you know, just to see the killers here because it's The smallest venue they're playing.

And they come from all over the world, you know, to see bands here.

We pride ourselves in being able to bring millions of dollars into this community in ways of supporting local businesses.

Bringing that revenue to this area and trying to get back in any way that we can moving forward.

I've always in my life, been a real estate investor.

I've been a collector, I owned a hockey facility, which I do here in Bethlehem, but we were the first people to build in this area.

And being a pioneer of building here in Bethlehem, you always have to surround yourself with great talent and the better people you bring around you, the better it is.

I had Tony iannelli tell me from the chamber of commerce that this this in the iron pig stadiums, were maybe two of the best things that ever came here in the Lehigh Valley, you know, because it draws people also from all over the place to come here.

This event center allows us the opportunity to bring in so many different types of culture, different types of events, and different types of people that are interested in those events.

That myriad of people that we can bring to this area for something positive.

For us, I feel like creates the biggest impact in the long term aspect of what we can do for a community.

There's a saying where words fail.

music speaks.

It's an international language for everyone.

Here everybody gets together doesn't matter who they are, what they believe in, they all can have a good time together.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart once said, to my eyes and ears, the organ will ever be the king of instruments.

And McConnachie, his own Alan organ is the king of electronic organs, you can find an Allen organ on every continent, including Antarctica, the first Allen organ built in the 1930s still pulls out all the stops to this very day.

We're more traditional worship here with a contemporary flair.

But the origin brings us back to that traditional European church sound.

It gives us some opportunities, especially with our new organ that's digital with other sounds, we can add some contemporary flavors and blend it together with the traditional sound of what we knew of as a pipe organ a couple 100 years ago.

What we really like about this new Allen organ, and I'm sure others that are of the same generation are the clarity and quality of each individual sound that as you layer them as the organist, you can hear this flute sound of that clarinet sound, that trumpet sound accompanied by this string section sound.

You can hear all those layers at the same time, it can feel the thunder of the new instrument it is that combination of multiple sounds at one time by one person that made it the king of instruments in its day.

I'm Steve Markowitz, president of Allen Organ Company.

My father was an amateur technician in the early 1930s.

His specialty was ham radios, and radios with oscillators as he learned that technology and as he went to Muhlenberg College and heard the pipe organ in their chapel, he decided that he wanted to take this technology and be able to create pipe organ sounds without pipes.

And that's how it all began.

Initially, there was a blower that was required to create the wind, that blower would be actually operated by humans that were turning on mechanical devices to create the pressure.

That pressure is then sent through little tubings into the pipes, and are turned off when the organist hits the keyboards in conjunction with the stops.

So a stop is basically any one of these these knobs here on the organs are the different sounds of the organ.

So for instance, sound like an like an oboe, or trumpet sounds.

What we did with analog technology is basically replaced the wind production with electronic circuitry.

Today we use digital technology, which is a completely different paradigm shift in sound production.

This is what we call our pipe interface board, and it includes power supply and it includes interface circuitry.

This enables us to act like this console that is a modern digital console was operates in the same way as the old mechanical console when this business moved out to a country from Allentown, there were a lot of craftsmen in an area, and there was a lot of hand labor.

And this this area had the ability to supply those craftsmen and craftswomen this manufacturing facility is unique in modern world today, this company stuck by the the process of making almost everything in house.

This building acts as an orchestra for organ building.

This is typical of the organs we make.

This is a church organ.

This kind of organ is found all over the world.

We make organs for a variety of venues.

Our main customers are religious institutions.

But we also sell to auditoriums, hockey arenas, and even homes.

To styles of organs we make what is the classical organ made to play classical music, typically, church organ.

The other is like this, which is a theater organ, it's a very special version, you see the coloration here, it's actually for a hockey arena up in Canada.

The buttons actually make the Oregon playable, you have over 100 stops there probably.

And if you had to sit there and registrate each one of those, you'd never be able to do it and play music, the organist will actually program the various combination of stops into these buttons.

The same thing with these toe studs down here.

They are also pre programmed so that he he or she can use their feet to change the whole specifications of the organ as being played.

They'll never be another organ a world made that looks exactly like this.

We start with raw wood, and then that wood has to be cut to certain dimensions, then that dimension stock has to be put into a console and created the custom consoles that we make, which are very different from each customer.

That console will then go to the finishing department.

And then that console gets stuffed with the electronic sub assemblies.

This is our circuit board assembly area.

And it's actually a semi clean room.

We not only make boards for ourselves in here for our organs, but we actually have a division that makes circuit boards for third party companies in the area where we'll supply circuit boards for their products.

In here, there's many hand tasks that cannot be done by machine.

After a final assembly process, they then go to our test rooms where they're actually put together played with the audio equipment where they'll be used in the churches or auditoriums.

I really didn't understand how the broad implications that this technology would have.

To me it was like an just an advancement in technology.

In hindsight, I realize as this technology went to other products, sound recording equipment, mp3 CDs, all of the cell phones, etc.

I realized how significant this technology was, and it's quite humbling quite frankly.

The digital world has come along so much that you can't deny any longer that it's an incredible instrument to sit and play and sit and listen to.

For more than 35 years Music Fest has brought music and money to the streets and stacks of Bethlehem.

This 10 Day annual festival of music, food and fun has yielded 10s of millions of dollars for the local economy.

This August Music Fest comes back full force.

We sat down with the key players behind this celebration of the arts to learn more about how music fest became the cultural heartbeat of our region.

I think there's nothing like walking through the city on a beautiful summer night, hearing one style of music, walking 20 feet right and hearing another style of music walking another 100 yards and being in front of a party.

People all sing and don't Stop Believin and then walk into the next sight and hearing a great Latin band tear up a salsa beat.

Music Fest is as diverse a festival as exists in America Hi, I'm Patrick Brogan.

I'm the chief programming officer for ArtsQuest.

ArtsQuest has a full time staff of over 60 individuals that work year round on everything we do from Christkindlmarkt SteelStacks music fast.

Music fast came out of a desire for community development.

For most of the 20th century Bethlehem Steel and Bethlehem were synonymous.

And Bethlem steel was the community it was the biggest employer.

So when the steel companies started to falter back in the 70s, things were looking bad here.

In 1982, I was part of a committee at the Chamber of Commerce that was trying to revitalize Bethlehem Northside downtown.

The north side of Bethlehem was restored as a historic community, but nobody was going there.

So I came up with the idea to have a music festival in the downtown at various plazas and main streets and celebrate this beautiful weather, the joy of music, and also the joy of the birth of a new industry in the Lehigh Valley.

They all thought it was nuts, we were going to try to bring 100,000 people to Downtown Bethlehem, but we did bring 180,000 people to Downtown Bethlehem in nine days.

And the attraction for a lot of people, once they came out and saw what was happening was that they were walking down the street with a beer in their hands.

And they were just kind of free and they were dancing in the street.

They were dancing in parking lots and they were experiencing, hey, this, this community looks pretty nice.

I want to be a part of it.

music and the arts and culture has a way to connect people and communities.

Unlike anything else, no matter whether you're rich or poor, young or old, you can stand or sit in this in front of the same act under the same sky and have a common experience with everyone around you.

People were really excited about definitely hence downtown.

They were excited about the festival, definitely and was starting to get a reputation as kind of a neat place.

What I did not know at the time that I proposed this crazy event was that there really was at that time, no such thing as a multidisciplinary festival where you have everything from classical music, to rock and polka.

It just wasn't heard of.

And it's still not that common today.

Music Fest stages are as diverse as the musicians that we put upon them, right?

Whether that's the acoustic brilliance of Muse of leader plots at the big sounds of fest plots, where you've got a large dance floor and people gathered around eating, drinking, catching up with one another, the central Moravian Church, which allows us to do a Vesper and chamber series that are more classical in nature to Plaza Tropicale, where we've got a dance floor and you feel the heat under the tent, which screams for some rock or some salsa and a really engaging show.

You know, historically, Music Fest delivers anywhere between 60 and $100 million of economic impact to the community, whether that's hotel rooms to people in dining and restaurants or shopping in shops.

And really it's the return visitor.

It's someone who comes to Bethlehem during music fast and says, Wow, what a gorgeous town I want to come back I want to come back to the casino.

I want to come back to this restaurant I saw.

I want to come back and shop in the shop that I saw while I was here.

That's what we're looking for.

So Music Fest grew into the Banana Factory, which we opened in 1998 on the south side of Bethlehem, then it grew into in the 90s.

We started Christkindlmarkt.

And then of course from in the 2000s Music Fest continued to grow.

We started deliberately looking at how can we revitalize the area where the steel plant is.

The south side of Bethlehem had this industrial Drac, if you will.

And it was it was a difficult place to sell to anybody.

We did interviews with a lot of the community to find out if they would even come to the south side of Bethlehem for an arts activity.

That's how dangerous the south side was considered at the time.

I was all in favor of tearing it all down the entire industrial area.

And then I took a group to Germany to look at what the Germans had done in revitalizing their industrial communities.

And we saw how they illuminated these blast furnaces, how they were using old buildings for all kinds of things.

When our group got back from Germany, we were all in In favor of keeping the last furnaces and building a campus adjacent to or around them.

And so we developed the concept for SteelStacks.

Campus for arts and cultural activities to be developed around these blast furnaces, respecting their history respecting the heritage, but also bringing new generations into experience of modern culture.

In this environment, the rest is kind of history SteelStacks has an equal impact to music fast on a on a year round basis, bringing in hundreds of shows and movies comedy were able to reach an impact on the community both economically with his own 60 plus million dollar impact at SteelStacks that can engage the community and inspire us to be a better place to live, work and play.

It's kind of cool sitting out here I am one of the biggest fans of the Levitt Pavilion I love sitting out here I love watching the sunset and the different colors that are evolved off the blast furnaces, it makes you feel more a part of a community than if those things had been ripped down and we forgot about them.

But there's a much deeper economic impact all this and that is that our businesses, our major businesses require talent require human talent, human resources.

And now you look at the Lehigh Valley drawing people from many, many different places to be here.

It is things like the cultural activities like music fast like Celtic fast, like Christkindl, art and so on, that make this community livable.

I consider that to be the success of everybody who worked on this project known as ArtsQuest SteelStacks Music Fest.

I think that that had a large part to do with who we are and where we are today.

Where would any show about music in the valley be without CF Martin?

The Nazareth based family owned company has been making acoustic guitars right here since the 1830s.

Their new CEO Thomas rips, comes from the world of tech and finance.

But he knows a little more about guitars than you might think, as our interviewer Georgette Phillips recently learned.

Thanks, Grover.

Welcome, Thomas.

Hi, George.

It.

Pleasure to be here.

So I'm wondering, was one of the prerequisites for you becoming CEO of Martin guitar that you actually play the guitar?

I do think it was, it wasn't a stated prerequisite.

But I think they were looking for somebody who has real passion for music and real passion for guitars.

And I have that.

I am guessing that you are the envy of many the corporate executive in your move, becoming CEO of Martin, how did the opportunity come to you?

Well, I had a long career as a consultant.

But I also had a lifelong passion for for guitars.

And over the last several years, I was thinking more and more about how can I combine my passions.

And I was looking for different opportunities, and the Martin opportunity came around.

And what better opportunity than that?

Have you learned the secret to success?

And Martin, what has made them so successful over the years?

Yeah, well over the years, in Martin's case, it's it's a long time.

So they were founded as you know, 1833, so 189 years old.

But I think one of the the core tenants of, of the Martin Company throughout its history was to make the best instruments with the best materials and tools available.

So a lot of focus on craftsmanship, artists and ship, knowing what good looks like sounds like, feels like.

And I think when you see the co workers, the artists and the graphs, people at Martin work, that's exactly what everybody is focused on.

And we've we've done that over a long, long time.

There is such a personal relationship between the musician and his or her instrument.

Yes.

So have you tweaked your customer service strategy because your background is in strategy?

Have?

Have you done anything while you've been at Martin to address it the customer strategy?

When we say customer in our case, it's our dealers and distributors, but the end customer is the consumer.

I think it's it's more and more important than ever, to really think about the experience beyond just the product.

So traditionally, Martin has has been very much a company that focused on products.

But increasingly over the last several years, we have also started to really embrace how we help consumers across their entire experience to engage with us to get meaning and joy out of the products.

But but also the passion for guitars learning other things.

So yes, you know, it's not it wasn't introduced when I joined, I think the company was already on a path.

But we're certainly focused all over that topic.

And I think we're going to accelerate a lot of things that, you know, we started to build out, because it's just going to be more and more important for any brand, the end user strategy that you were talking about.

Exactly.

Well, speaking of end users, there are some really big name people playing Martin guitars.

What could you share with our audience?

Some of those folks?

Yes, there.

There are a lot.

What some of the people that that inspired me personally also, that played Martin guitars or play Martin guitars, people like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, joined by Elizabeth cotton.

And then more recently, people like John Mayer or Tommy Manuel.

So there, there are lots through the years, and I do think the artist association with Martin, it's, it's such an important part of why I think we are pretty iconic in our space.

Did you ever think that you would be able to have both your passion and your business sense come together in such a way?

To be honest, not this way?

You know, I think the the Martin, kind of me being part of Martin, and then me, being in this role is incredibly exciting and humbling, but I don't think you can ever plan something like that in your life.

what somebody said to me, you know, things don't happen by accident.

So, you know, maybe that's true.

But no, I would have never imagined that I would end up where I am now.

But so I'm incredibly humbled, excited.

It's it's awesome to be part of the journey was absolutely wonderful talking with you.

And thank you so much, Thomas, for joining George it.

It was a pleasure.

Back to you, Grover.

Thanks, Tom, and Georgette and thank you for joining us on Lehigh Valley rising.

You can find this episode as well as previous installments at our website, PBS 30 nine.org.

Or through the PBS app.

And let us know what you thought on social media using the hashtag LV rising from all of us.

I'm Grover Silcox.

Thanks for watching.

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