A First for Middleburg: The Hunt Country Music Festival

A First for Middleburg: The Hunt Country Music Festival

By Leonard Shapiro

Rich Kleinfeldt is known far and wide as the long-time weekend evening host on WETA Classic Radio. Off the air, he’s a highly accomplished musician, as attendees for the first Hunt Country Music Festival May 20-22 will learn when he and his heralded Washington Saxophone Quartet is scheduled to perform.

And no, just because it’s four saxophonists doesn’t mean their music will be all that jazz. They play pieces ranging from Bach to The Beatles and have a huge following all around the beltway, and sometimes way beyond.

“When you say saxophone, most people immediately think jazz,” Kleinfeldt said. “That’s really not unfair. But since the early 1960s, saxophone quartets have gained in popularity, and we now have musical arrangements for us so we can play any genre of music.”

Washington Saxophone Quartet co-founder Rich Kleinfeldt.

Produced by The Middleburg Concert Series, the inaugural three-day music festival will feature pop, classical, opera, tango, big band and more, with performances at venues in Middleburg and Upperville. Festival attendees also will enjoy free street entertainment by strolling musicians, town criers and walking tours that will highlight historic hunt country lore.

Kleinfeldt, who plays tenor sax, and his soprano, alto and baritone cohorts surely are the most widely heard saxophone quartet in the nation if only because their group provides the musical interludes for National Public Radio’s highly regarded “All Things Considered” show.

Over the years, he’s also served as a fill-in announcer, weekend host, and presenter of live broadcast concerts from the Library of Congress. In addition to co-hosting the nationally syndicated radio program Center Stage from Wolf Trap, Kleinfeldt is also the on-stage emcee for Chamber Music at the Barns at Wolf Trap and performances by The City of Fairfax Band.

Kleinfeldt grew up in Illinois and has been playing since high school. In 1965 he attended a music camp at Northwestern University, where one of his instructors had recently returned from Paris and had “gotten the classical music bug,” according to Kleinfeldt.

At Millikin University, he played in a school quartet and also the jazz band. He was there at the height of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, and when his draft lottery number came up, it seemed inevitable he would soon be in uniform. He was, but not in combat. A friend had told him about military bands, so he auditioned and ended up in the famed U.S. Army Band.

He played with them for 13 years, and in 1976, he and one of his fellow Army musicians, Reg Jackson, decided to start the saxophone quartet. All four members of the group are now retired military musicians, and all have had other careers. Kleinfeldt has been an adjunct professor at George Mason and Catholic universities, a broadcaster for the Voice of America and a teacher and lecturer.

“We’re all trying to make music an important part of our lives,” he said of hs quartet colleagues.

Attendees at the first Hunt Country Music Festival will quickly know that for this Army Band veteran, it’s definitely mission accomplished.

Tickets for the inaugural festival can be purchased online at Eventbrite and on-site on the day of the performance. For more information, visit huntcountrymusicfestival.org, middleburgconcerts.com and Facebook.com/middleburgconcerts.