Most performers will tell you that this is their favorite festival and look forward to coming back year after year. Then there is the intimacy of the whole thing. Where some of the performers have performed in front of a crowd of thousands, here the crowd may be 200 and in the workshops it is much less, perhaps 20 people or less. You get a chance to sit next to one of the musicians and learn from him/her; get up close & personal with that musician and later maybe have a drink with him/her. When you see the performers and the spectators mingling before & after a concert it really is old friends getting together.
