Fairfield arts center to wrap up outdoor concert series

FAIRFIELD – The Fairfield Arts & Convention Center will conclude its Summer Sun Concert Series this week when Nicholas Naioti takes the stage at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

The concert series is the first outdoor series of concerts the arts center has taken on, and the concerts have been some of the first public events at the arts center since the pandemic forced it to shut down in the spring of 2020.

The series began on June 2 when Bo Ramsey played to a crowd of several hundred on North Main Street outside the arts center. The center hosted the next concert outdoors, too, but the last three in the series have been pushed indoors due to rain in the forecast.

The concerts are using sound equipment purchased through the Brian MacQueen Memorial, which raised $10,000 to honor its namesake Brian MacQueen, the arts center’s technical director from 2015-2018 who died in March of this year.

All six of the acts in the series are from Iowa, and some of them have an even more local connection such as Naioti, who lives in Fairfield. Wednesday’s audience can look forward to an “aural kaleidoscope of danceable, hooky beats giving buoyancy to emotionally raw lyrics,” the arts center’s promotion material said.

After its Summer Sun Concert Series, the arts center will transition to hosting indoor acts once again. Its annual artist series will begin on Sept. 3 when The Hit Men will perform in the Stephen Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts.