The Arts Council of Kern is working together with residents of Bakersfield to host The Bakersfield House Concert Series. These concerts will feature artists of different genres, including Celtic, Irish, folk and blues.

Steve Key, a singer and songwriter, will be performing on March 28. Previously, The Browne Sisters and George Cavanaugh, a Gaelic folk group, performed as a part of the series in February. Other performers include Tony McManus, Joe Craven, who will perform in May, and Anne Weiss, who will perform in June.

According to Jill Egland, Director of Special Projects at The Art Council of Kern, one of the reasons to host the series here is Bakersfield’s location. She said, “Because we sit on [Highway 99] and are in between Los Angeles and San Francisco. We get a lot of entertainers passing through and it makes it possible for them to perform.”

Egland said the house concerts also act as “a kind of audience building.”

“The purpose of the Art Council of Kern is to expose all people to different kinds of music. The thing about house concerts is that it’s such a great small venue, that it really gives you the possibility of really digesting other forms of music, you’re hearing the stories, you’re getting a personal relationship with the musicians. It makes a big difference in people embracing other [music genres].”

According to Egland, “You really have an opportunity to understand why a performer has chosen a kind of music to do and understand why they approach them the way they approach them. It makes it easy to understand and appreciate things you may not have realized you liked.”

Another goal of the series, according to England, is to “democratize entertainment.” She said, “It makes it possible for people to see that they can participate, that art is not outside ourselves, that it is something we all can participate in. It’s a very cool thing for the people who hosted these concerts and bringing artists into their homes and having human conversations with people they may have felt they could not have had a chance to meet, and they are also bringing about the possibly of a group of people being introduced to different kinds of artists, different kinds of music.”

Egland said that the series could help build the community of art in Bakersfield, and that the series acts as a “community building strategy.” She said, “Everybody is responsible for artistic vitality in Kern County. We are all responsible and we can participate in the vitality of the arts, ‘have a concert in your home.’ It’s not the responsibly of merely Spotlight Theatre or Rabobank [Arena]. It’s in everybody’s hands. That’s a really important part of the house concerts.”

Although The Art Council of Kern now handles most of the organization and promotion of the house concerts, it is Egland’s hope that hosts would “really, really like doing this and just do it all the time, and host their own home concerts series.”

The Bakersfield House Concert Series also gives 100 percent of the admission collected to the musicians. For information on tickets, contact The Art Council of Kern at 324-9000, or their website www.kernarts.org.