The show will go on at Greenfield Village’s four-day “Salute to America” celebration this week, despite extreme heat, as the U.S. celebrates its 250th anniversary.
The annual festival with fireworks and Detroit Symphony Orchestra performances kicks off Thursday evening and goes through Sunday. The celebration will feature its usual focus on American music — but also its traditional performance of the “1812 Overture” accompanied by cannon fire, which, despite the music’s origin as a celebration of Russia’s victory over Napoleon, has become a staple at Fourth of July celebrations.
And this year, the DSO’s music director and principal conductor, Jader Bignamini, will lead the concert all four nights.
The festival, which opens at 5 p.m. each day, also features food trucks on Main Street, people in period costumes and musical performances that represent a spectrum of American music including ragtime, blues, folk and jazz. The DSO takes the stage each evening at 8:30.
Reflecting on this year’s celebration falling on the country’s 250th birthday, Jim Johnson, Greenfield Village’s director and curator of landscapes and structures, said he believes the Founding Fathers would have “lots of questions” about how some things are interpreted and looked at today in the U.S. versus their original intent. But he’s hopeful that the country’s founding principles remain strong.
“It would be an interesting discussion to have with those folks, because the world has changed; the country has changed so much,” Johnson said. “But the founding principles are still really sound, and hopefully they’re things that we continue to live by.”
Greenfield Village also has a few events coming up to mark America’s 250th anniversary: On July 8, an evening program will commemorate the first reading of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, and the village will have free admission.
Fireworks explode during the annual Salute to America event at Greenfield Village, in Dearborn, July 3, 2023.
“That’s going to be a cool commemoration, because it’s happening simultaneously across the country. It’s a coordinated effort that communities across the country are all together reading the declaration on that day,” he said.
Greenfield Village is also one of eight sites in the U.S. chosen to display rarely seen documents associated with the country’s founding, which will run from July 9 to 26.
The village has put on the Salute to America celebration for more than 30 years. Johnson said Thursday and Friday’s performances are sold out, and Saturday’s concert for the Fourth of July holiday has few tickets left. The country celebrating its 250th anniversary has drawn some particular interest this year, he believes.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: ‘Salute to America’ at Greenfield Village to start with sold-out DSO performances
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