Hartbeat Festival moves online: ‘It’s crazy, right?’

Prerecorded concerts will attempt to deliver freshness, spontaneity of a live show

In its first year, the Hartbeat Festival in Riverfront Park featured 18 bands and drew 2,500 people. Last year there were 24 bands, and 7,000 people showed up. This year, an even larger event had been planned. When it was scuttled by COVID-19, the organizers got creative.

“It’s crazy, right?” says the festival’s founder Earl Henrichon of the band Professors of Sweet Sweet Music. “The whole world is melting down, and we really needed to make this happen.”

The festival has moved online for a fourhour burst of local band sounds from 4 to 8 p.m. on Sept. 12. While all the different segments of the online concert will be prerecorded, it attempts to deliver all the freshness and spontaneity of a live show.

In much the same way that last year’s festival took place over three separate stages, the 2020 online Hartbeat Festival has three distinct elements. There are about 30 one-song videos submitted by local bands, including established acts like rock prodigy Jake Kulak and the Lowdown, reggae group Kali Walé & Drum Sound Language and New Haven-based jam band John Spignesi Band.

There are also “mini-sets” of several songs each by Erica Bryan and Tom Sullivan (of the funky West End Blend and the new-soul New Mosaic), resurrected alt-rockers Chaser Eight, Americana siblings The Meadows Brothers, eclectic jazz/world musician Orice Jenkins, jam-friendly Jeremiah Hazed, the jazz/ soul/hip-hop wonderment The Miles Elliot Experience, piano-based rockers Streetlight Shakers, electronic dance queen Khadijia Lisa and the self-described RapOet known as Khaiim (and also known as Self Suffice).