Photos: Playing on the Porch music festival puts the ‘rock’ in Rockville Centre

Rockville Centre’s fourth annual Playing on the Porch music festival returned on Saturday afternoon with more than 30 musical acts spread out across the front porches, lawns and driveways of homes throughout the community.

Festival founder Iyna Caruso said that the concept behind the community-wide roving concert series first originated in Ithaca, New York.

“We were the first ones to bring it to Long Island,” Caruso said. “The idea came about because Rockville Centre is architecturally perfect for it. A lot of people in the community have porches and big front lawns.”

Each of the performances pulled in quite a crowd as members of the community walked, biked and drove through the residential streets to see different performances.

“I love the lineup this year,” Caruso said. “We have a lot of returning bands which we love to see.”

This year’s musical showcase went on for three hours and featured more than 32 different bands and soloists, each performing a variety of different styles and genres of music including reggae, jazz, classical, Irish, pop and classic rock.

“Musicians are really enthusiastic about it. They really go all out to make this a fun event,” Caruso said. “I don’t have favorites. I just try to get to as many performances as I can to support all the bands and make sure things are going smoothly.”

Presented by the Rockville Centre Chamber of Commerce, the Playing on the Porch music festival is held every September with additional support from the local business community, which helps by organizing “porch patrons” that sponsor the different home venues.

Caruso said that as the festival organizer, she is constantly looking at new ways to tweak the event and make it better, and as a member of the Chamber, she wants to continue to see the business community support the festival in a big way and hopes to add a lot more sponsors in the future.

“We always wanted it to be a community event,” she said. “I think that will always affect how we see it changing in the future.”

While the event is always free to attend, suggested donations can be made online via the “virtual tip jar” at RockvilleCentreChamberofCommerce.com. Merchandise is also available online for purchase. All of the proceeds raised during this year’s event will go to benefit the Rockville Chamber of Commerce’s South Side High School Scholarship program.

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