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National Folk Festival Attracts Large Crowds, Reaches Donation Goal

An overflow crowd enjoys a performance at the 2017 National Folk Festival in Greensboro. DAVID FORD/WFDD

Officials with The National Folk Festival are celebrating a successful run in Greensboro.

This year's festival attracted more people and received more donations than during its first two years in the city.

Tom Philion is the president and chief executive of ArtsGreensboro, which co-produced the free three-day event in September.

Philion tells the News and Record of Greensboro that about 162,000 people attended the festival. That's up nearly 59 percent since it first came to the city.

Philion says good weather contributed to this year's large turnout.

The festival also surpassed a fundraising goal of $77,000, nearly doubling donations from the previous year.

The National Folk Festival next moves to Salisbury, Maryland.

The locally-produced North Carolina Folk Festival will launch next September in Greensboro.

Neal Charnoff joined 88.5 WFDD as Morning Edition host in 2014. Raised in the Catskill region of upstate New York, he graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1983. Armed with a liberal arts degree, Neal was fully equipped to be a waiter. So he prolonged his arrested development bouncing around New York and L.A. until discovering that people enjoyed listening to his voice on the radio. After a few years doing overnight shifts at a local rock station, Neal spent most of his career at Vermont Public Radio. He began as host of a nightly jazz program, where he was proud to interview many of his idols, including Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins. Neal graduated to the news department, where he was the local host for NPR's All Things Considered for 14 years. In addition to news interviews and features, he originated and produced the Weekly Conversation On The Arts, as well as VPR Backstage, which profiled theater productions around the state. He contributed several stories to NPR, including coverage of a devastating ice storm. Neal now sees the value of that liberal arts degree, and approaches life with the knowledge that all subjects and all art forms are connected to each other. Neal and his wife Judy are enjoying exploring North Carolina and points south. They would both be happy to never experience a Vermont winter again.

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