By Ashlyn Armock, Arts Editor
Friday, March 20 at 7:30 p.m. Alger Park Church held a concert for their fifth annual music series Music in the Heights.
Started in 2021 by musician Cameron Blake, Music in the Heights “aims to contribute to the culture of Grand Rapids by presenting free, high quality concerts of many different genres,” says the Music in the Heights’s instagram page.
The stage set up before the concert began – Photo by Ashlyn Armock
The concert performed on Friday was titled “Picture Songs” and featured Michigan native artists Kait Rose and the Charlie Millard Band. Blake introduced not only the concert and the artists, but also the theme of the concert as well.
“The idea is that when you actually close your eyes and listen to their lyrics, they’re almost cinematic,” Blake said when describing what the title and theme actually meant in relation to the musicians.
Rose opened the performance with just a guitar and her song Middle of Nowhere. She continued with originals titled Vigilante, Call You Home, California, Michigan Summer and Hillside. Rose also included a cover of artist Aaron Lee Tasjan’s On Your Side as well as an unreleased original called The Lone Star State. Finally in memory of her grandmother and of her passing, she performed the last song, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, acapella.
Kait Rose performing with electric guitar – Photo by Ashlyn Armock
When describing the theme of the concert, Rose related it to her love of music videos. “I really love this idea…because I love to, you know, make a little mini movie out of a song…I hope that music videos continue to be a thing,” Rose said.
The second half of the concert was performed by the Charlie Millard Band which included members Charlie Millard on piano/organ, Jercat Millard on guitar and Will Harris on drums. The band started when the father-son duo–Jercat Millard and Charlie Millard–started writing songs together and began playing at shows.
The Charlie Millard Band performing – Photo by Ashlyn Armock
“So that just kind of led us to build a little following, build the band up north and then we just kept moving on from there,” Charlie Millard said. “We’ve toured around Canada and around the U.S. and have been doing that for over 10 years now.”
Some of the songs they performed included Weddings Bells, Lavender Blue, Vanessa and many others that they have yet to release. Something to note is that most of their published music can be exclusively found on vinyls, cassettes and CD’s with only three of their songs–Wedding Bells, Oceans Deep and Lavender Blue–available on Spotify.
“It’s just so delightful when you get to play in a spot where your friends can come and make it down, sort of in this like cabin fever concert type thing.” Charlie Millard said.
Music in the Heights will continue with their 2026 concert series and all of their future concerts can be found in the link below:
The Saint 