Carlos y su Movimiento Musical.
A dozen varieties of fruit flavors and a dozen Latin rhythms came together on Monday evening as the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance closed out HI Fi Pie, its series of outdoor concerts and pie-making contests held in Beecher Park, in front of the Mitchell Branch Library, in Westville.
Lizzy Donius.
“This was a fantastic year,” Lizzy Donius, WVRA’s executive director, said of Hi Fi Pie’s 2024 run. The weather largely cooperated, with only one cancellation. “Record baking, huge audiences, and fabulous bands.” This year, in fact, marked the year in which the event seemed to return to pre-pandemic levels of participation. “And some things are bigger,” Donius said. The number of participating bakers has grown, with some nights seeing pies from over a dozen bakers.
The series was also notable for its continuity. The event is run by the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance and “is a self-perpetuating thing,” Donius said, in the sense that the proceeds from one year have covered the expenses for the next. “It pays for itself,” she said. For the bands, “we try to keep it local” and to “keep the level high,” she said. Carlos y su Movimiento Musical “have been the anchor” of the series, holding down the last concert slot, for “at least three years,” Donius said, and this year was no different. The event has been happening for long enough that people who used to attend as kids are now involved as staff, running sound. A new generation of kids, meanwhile, has gotten involved in baking pies in the contest’s youth division.
Overall, Hi Fi Pie remains a “classic community event” in the way that it’s “kind of a Frankenstein,” she added with a laugh, as it combines a musical performance and a pie bake-off — all in the name of simply creating a night out for people in the community to relax outside, listen to music, and eat pie.
“Unless you’re a baker,” Donius joked. “Then it’s a blood sport.”
Midnight Strangers with Mila Volpe.
The Midnight Strangers — lead vocalist and drummer Jack Marchand, bassist Nolan Wazni, and keyboardist Ben Card — kicked off the evening with a set of originals and covers, joined by guest vocalist Mila Volpe. The Midnight Strangers, now sophomores in college, have been playing together since the fifth grade, and that history showed in their ease in playing with one another and the unified sound they created.
Meanwhile, a long line of people quickly formed — in order to quickly consume — a variety of pies: cherry, blueberry and grape, watermelon cream, cherry mango, roasted plum, sweet potato, lemon meringue, Italian cream, and chocolate churro. These pies were served with gelato and the combination meant that the pies seemed to disappear almost as soon as they were bought.
It was just as apparent, however, that the crowd wasn’t just there to eat pie, as they settled in for both the Midnight Strangers and the group that followed.
Carlos of Carlos y su Movimiento Musical announced that the band was celebrating 34 years of playing together (as well as their next performance, at Bear’s Smokehouse on Aug. 7).
“We’re going to play salsa, merengue, bachata, everything,” he announced. Over the next hour, the band made good on that promise. Driving bass and intricate guitar danced over and under a powerful rhythm section that made it impossible for many in the audience to keep still, as equally forceful singing stirred them to action. One couple took to its feet during the band’s second song, a bachata, and didn’t sit down. Others joined them.
“Give yourselves some applause!” Carlos said.
As the set continued, more and more people got up and moved, until there was a small dance section stepping across the lawn in front of the band. The musicians fed off that energy, stepping up their own in turn.
“My father says the best medicine” — for a host of ailments, Carlos said — “is dancing. You feel so good.” They ended their set with a blistering merengue. “Everybody applaud!” Carlos said. They did.
By then the pies had been judged, and the winner announced. It was Nero Fuller, for his blueberry and grape pie. He had entered in the junior division, but the judges deemed it the best overall. If that was fudging the rules, nobody seemed to mind.