The fourth Hillfest festival is on for this Saturday, July 17 at 4 p.m in Lord’s Valley, New Ipswich, after the organizers were forced to cancel last summer due to the pandemic.
The Christian music festival first began in 2015 as a fundraising project for Hope Fellowship Church in Jaffrey. The organizers saw success in terms of community response and Hillfest was born.
“We’re excited to be back, and live, and in-person with events,” said Chad Gibson, one of Hillfest’s directors.
The festival will be headlined by Jeremy Camp, who has had four of his albums reach RIAA-certified Gold status in the U.S. There will be five other artists featured – Austin French, Sidewalk Prophets, CAIN, Maria Hilman, and the Cashmans – all of whom Gibson said were originally scheduled to perform at last summer’s festival and agreed to come this summer instead.
Tickets purchased for last year’s festival will be honored for this summer’s, and in addition to pre-purchased online tickets, a limited amount of tickets will be sold at the gate prior to the festival.
Gibson said that the organizers expect a successful festival like in previous, except that their definition of success is a bit different than other festival organizers. “For us, it’s about spreading the gospel. We want people to just come out and understand that they’re loved,” Gibson said. “It’s not about the numbers or how many people attend, or the money, it’s about the positive message.”
Gibson said that qualifier for success can be hard to quantify – “We don’t always hear about it,” he said. Although sometimes he and other organizers get messages throughout the year from people they’ve impacted. “We feel like we’re making a positive impact,” he said.
“So long as there seems to be a desire in the community to have an event like this and we feel led, we’re just going to continue to do that and just see where it goes,” Gibson said. Already, Gibson and the Hillfest staff are looking forward and planning the festival for 2022.
Tickets for Saturday’ s show are available at www.hillfestevents.com.