Historical Concert Schedules and Photo History

 
 

How It Started

Brian Farmer, at the time a Londonderry Town Councilor, started organizing Concerts on the Common in 2003. (His very talented wife, Elaine, drew the image shown above of the bandstand.) Here is Brian’s recollection of the series’ beginnings:

I suppose it’s fair to say that I started it although Blue Note (a local music store at the time) did try it out for a couple of years. They were trying different nights and never seemed to get it to stick. I never realized they had done it until going to them to see if they wanted to sponsor a night or two.

I had gone to the Derry event a couple of times and then thought “Why don’t we do this in Londonderry?” We started it as being sponsored by the Cultural Resources Committee (now the Londonderry Arts Council) after getting permission from the Town Council in May of 2003.

Those first couple of years I did a lot of the organizing such as finding the bands, putting up flyers, getting sponsors, etc. Seems I had the time in those days and now we’ve switched places (ie, Stephen and Julie Lee). We have had lots of acts, tried lots of things, some worked well.

We started the very first season on June 9, 2003 with the LHS Jazz Band and they have been the opening performer every year since. That has been one of the most rewarding parts of this.

Below are the concert schedules with links to photos of the events. We don’t have most of the schedule for 2003, and photos of early concerts are few and far between. Enjoy!