Music & Heart in Wright Park
A festival at the heart of Sound
The 2026 festival is deferred to 2027 as we address the issues this festival was taken on to face. Follow the work here on THE WALL.
Read Our Origins →
Funded in part by Tacoma Creates since 2022 — tacomacreates.org · our city's first-in-Washington, voter-approved arts initiative (Cultural Access Program, founded 2018). Funds that let us focus more on creating and worry less about how to pay for it.
Music & Heart in Wright Park is a bedrock Northwest music festival with roots reaching into the earliest 1990s, when it was Art in the Park. It is one of the smallest handful of festivals from that time still alive, and it seemed important enough to keep it real.
Tacoma's music history is rich with forward-thinking bands ahead of the Times — from the Sonics and the Wailers to the bands of the 1990s when Northwest music was found internationally. NIRVANA and SOUNDGARDEN practiced here; Jerry Cantrell of ALICE IN CHAINS was born and raised here and attributes his upbringing in Tacoma to influencing his songs, especially Rooster. We feel our work adds to this richness in our own particular way.
The festival welcomes artists all to THE WALL: every band that plays picks a community partner to lift, and the public that gives directly to a 501(c)(3) gets everything in THE HOARD. Music really does save lives — if you know, you know — and some of us simply need it. Read the longer story in Our Origins.
Funding. Music & Heart has been funded in part by Tacoma Creates every year since 2022, and is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike, a 501(c)(3) — which makes gifts to the festival tax-deductible.
Saturday, August 16, 2025 · music at high noon · Tacoma's Wright Park. Follow the pulse at the heart of Sound. Recap reels are on Instagram @TheseArtistsROCK.
The 2024 festival, with the partner wall of local and regional sponsors who make the day free for everyone.
2023 brought THE WALL to Wright Park as an interactive art exhibit alongside Bell Street's Flag House, live painting, art vendors and a full day of bands.
2022 was the first Music & Heart funded in part by Tacoma Creates — see the funding note at the top of this page. Thred Up joined as a print partner on the poster.
After the pandemic year we returned to Wright Park. Terry Lumsden Law has had a physical presence at Music & Heart every year since 2021, as sponsor and patron of the work since 2016.
My good friend Martin Thomas Reed and I collaborated to save Music & Art in Wright Park. The 2019 festival was our first as Music & Heart in Wright Park; Colin Scott Reynolds — who played the very first y2112 presentation in 2012 — played the first Music & Heart.
Content coming soon
The PDF is being copied to THE WALL. Until then it opens from the original site.
Open the PDF on stars4peace.org
Be part of a cultural music festival at the heart of NW music heritage. Bands add music, pick a community partner, and reach people who care about the world around them.
Email thestarwall@proton.me — add the subject "MHWP". Vendors and bands: read the load-in handout above before the day.
Drink Spiking is real - KNOW ABOUT IT.
The worst hangovers aren't always hangovers.
This Happens Everywhere — Know the Signs
1+ in 10 (very conservatively) have their drinks spiked: The symptoms are often confused with "having too much to drink," a bad hangover, the flu, etc. & the people who do it know exactly what they are doing - YOU should too. LEARN THE SIGNS & share with friends. You might save their life.