It was the 1990s when the Paderewski Festival first arrived in Paso Robles to celebrate the musical legacy left behind by famed composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski. Paderewski fell in love with the area when he arrived to heal his hand in the hot springs in 1914, and he has been woven into our town’s musical history ever since.
However, like all good things, the music-filled four-day weekend of music and festive fun came to an abrupt halt after the 2003 San Simon Earthquake, which severely damaged the Flamson Middle School auditorium. The auditorium was a staple in the artistic community prior to the earthquake, and the loss of the space affected the community by removing one of the most used performance spaces in the North County. It wasn’t until 2006 that the Paderewski Festival made its triumphant return to Paso Robles.
“I drove to Paso, and I went around to wineries, and finally found, after going all over the place and trying to find a venue, I found Cass Winery. And Steve Cass graciously let us use his barrel room,” said the Paderewski Festival’s Artistic Director Marek Zebrowksi. “We moved the barrels. We brought in the piano from the Paso Robles schools, and there it was. You know, the first festival, renewed festival, or reborn festival, in 2006.”
Cass Winery and Vineyards opened just a year before the rebirth of the Paderewski Festival in 2005, and at that time, Steve had decided to host some music-related events to bring people out to their location. After a few that didn’t work out, Steve jumped at the chance when Marek reached out and asked if Cass Winery would be interested in hosting the restart of the festival.
“I knew a little bit about it and its history in the ’90s. I bought the property in ’99, which was the last year of the original version of the Paderewski Festival,” Steve said. “My wife is Polish, and she plays piano, so she was very excited about the possibility of doing something with them, and I saw it as an opportunity to get people to come to the winery.”
Due to the break between the festival in the ’90s and 2006, there wasn’t a board of directors or any local promotion for the festival due to Marek living in Southern California.
“So when they had the very first concert in 2006, we invited a lot of community members to come out that we knew, we were relatively new to town ourselves, and a lot of people were saying the festival in the ’90s was really a great thing and we need to restart it,” Steve continued.
Then it came to light that the grandson of the original Paderewski Festival founder, Virginia Peterson, had moved back to Paso and that Steve should reach out to see if he would want to join an effort to restart the festival. So, Steve called Joel Peterson, and they teamed up with Marek to get the festival back in gear.
“The first year, we didn’t call it the Paderewski Festival; we called it Paderewski Reprise, meaning ‘do it again’ [in music terms], but then the next year we thought, well let’s just change it and start calling it the festival from here on out,” stated Steve.
And since 2007, the Paderewski Festival has been back in full swing, with a few little alterations here and there to make up for things like global pandemics. In fact, this year, the programming has expanded over the grade into San Luis Obispo, as the festival has teamed up with the San Luis Obispo (SLO) Symphony.
The 2024 Paderewski Festival is making its return from Oct. 31 through Nov. 3 this year. To find out more about the Paderewski Festival or to buy or reserve tickets for this year’s festival, go to paderewskifest.com.
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