KINGFIELD – After having a few days to recover, reflect and dry their clothes, organizers of the first Kingfield POPS concert say the event was everything they imagined, and more.

An estimated 1,000 people attended the Saturday evening concert held on the sloping grass field behind the Kingfield Flower Farm and Nursery and featuring a 58-piece orchestra from the Bangor Symphony, which performed Broadway showstoppers, movie classics and patriotic tunes.

Even a 10-minute rainstorm couldn’t put a damper on things, as audience members waited it out by ducking into their cars or throwing their lawn chairs over their heads to dodge the deluge.

“It really turned out to be great,” said Catherine LeClair, marketing director for the the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, the nation’s longest running orchestra of its kind, from her Bangor office on Tuesday. “When people left after the show, their faces were beaming. There is an audience there that will put up with the black flies, the mosquitoes and the weather, and still have a great time. That was an affirmation to us.”

LeClair said she, and other representatives from the BSO didn’t know what to expect since advance ticket sales were lower than expected. However, on Saturday night, when the cars started lining up and people began piling out, “impressed” and “relieved” were the words that come to her mind.

Music in the classrooms

Although there won’t be more shows this summer, members of the BSO will be back this fall in SAD 58 music classrooms and perhaps performing small ensemble concerts at Sugarloaf. Next summer, orchestra members are looking forward to returning to their new home.

“It may be too early to say it felt like home. But we all felt there was real potential for it to become that. We are all pretty excited for for the future. We want to show the people of Kingfield that this is more than just a summer show. We really want to invest our time and resources in this community,” LeClair said, still stunned that the event was a go, and a successful one at that. “It felt like a very natural fit.”

Organizers up in the mountains say they’re feeling good about the experience as well.

“We are amazed we pulled it off, and thrilled,” gushed Vici Robinson, chairwoman of the Kingfield Pops committee, a subcommittee for the Mount Abram Economic Development Association.

Even four days after the music had rolled over the hills and been swept away in the cool mountain air, Robinson said the buzz in the Kingfield community is still one of excitement.

For all the community

Thanks to donations by the Simmons Trust and private individuals, 300 tickets were given out to local people without charge, all in hopes of making the symphony more accessible. For this inclusive reason, Robinson could honestly say, “To me it felt like a true community celebration.”

The development group was formed to spark economic growth in the area, which has been hard-hit by recent mill closings and a shift towards foreign manufacturing, especially in the wood products industry. Kingfield Pops was its inaugural event and sometime within the next month or two, the association members will decide if they will make the commitment to bring the sound of music back to the hills.

Alison Hagerstrom, executive director of the Greater Franklin Development Cooperation, based in Farmington, is one who is hopefully Pops will be back, both as an audience member at Saturday’s show and as an advocate for business in the area.

“I loved it, despite the rain. That’s what will make it memorable. We do want them here,” she says of the BSO. “And we’ll do anything – even stand in the pouring rain. It was just really a fun thing to see.”

Hagerstrom says she has looked over economic impact of Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, on its summer home in Lenox in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts.

The numbers indicate that when new cultural opportunities come to a community, money and business will follow, she said.

“People want to live where they have choices,” Hagerstrom notes, saying the BSO’s relationship with Kingfield would make the region more attractive for its current residents, and those who are thinking about moving their family or business here.

“Next year it can only be bigger and better,” she says, “and it was great this year.”

sdepoy@sunjournal.com