September 12–19, 1996

cover story

Bells Will Ring

The first ringing of Robert Coburn's Avenue of the Arts Bells takes place at 1:15p.m. on October 3 at the Academy of Music. It's the opening ceremony of the four-day Avenue of the Arts Festival, which celebrates the completion of the $15 million streetscaping project that complements the renovations and new construction taking place up and down Broad Street.

Besides evening performances at most of the Avenue's venues Friday and Saturday night, the list of events and workshops taking place is endless. West African dance demonstrations, a reading by Sonia Sanchez, horticultural workshops and a drawing marathon at the Museum of American Art are a few of the attractions on Saturday. And on Sunday, Broad Street will be closed to traffic from City Hall to Fitzwater Street all afternoon, and musicians, dancers and storytellers will perform at stages at every intersection. Stand halfway up the block between Walnut and Sansom and you'll hear the Rimsky-Korsakov Brass Ensemble in one ear and El Mariachi in the other. There'll also be performances from STOMP, the American Music Theater Festival, the Phila. Boys' Choir, a string band, a klezmer band, and the Asociacion de Musicos Latino Americanos, just to name a few. Plus there'll be street performers, including jazz bagpiper Rufus Harley, Thaddeus Phillips' Lucidity Suitcase Theater, Chinese Dragon and Drummers, and more, more, more.

And... there'll be food. Participating restaurants include Cuvee Notredame, Bistro Bix, Tony Clark's, Circa, Sansom Street Oyster House, Aglio, Striped Bass, Rococo and Chanterelles.