It should be a celebration for the senses at the 30th Erie Blues & Jazz Festival at Frontier Park on Aug. 5-7. An extensive variety of blues and jazz music acts, film screenings, dance troupes, artist workshops, food vendors, breweries and more are part of the annual festival.

Person2Person, Grady Champion and Davy Knowles are scheduled to headline the three-day outdoor festival, according to organizers. The free celebration of art, music and the environment is being held at the home of the Lake Erie Arboretum at Frontier Park.

Champion, a Mississippi-based, Grammy Award-winning songwriter/singer/guitarist/harmonicist, will headline blues-focused entertainment Aug. 6 at 8 p.m. on the mainstage. Champion has released 10 albums and his song, "Trust Yourself," earned a Grammy in 2003 as it was covered by Etta James, according to gradychampion.com.

Blues guitarist/singer/songwriter Knowles, who goes on at 6 p.m. on Aug. 6, has several top-five Billboard Blues charting albums, according to davyknowles.com. His tour schedule has included appearances with, among others, The Who, Jeff Beck, Kid Rock, Joe Bonamassa and Peter Frampton, who called him, "the gunslinger guitarist of the 21st century."

Other performers Aug. 6 include Erie-area artists Phunkademic, Matt “Broke” Boland’s Blues Batch and One World Tribe with West Indian Revelation.

Phunkademic, billed as one of Erie's premier party funk band, includes longtime blues scene stalwarts Eric Brewer on guitar and vocals and Ralph Reitinger on bass, among others. Meanwhile, Boland, longtime leader of Matty B and the Pickles, assembled an all-star lineup for his Blues Batch, which includes harmonica master Ron Yarosz and Boland’s blues mentor Rodger Montgomery on guitar. The multicultural One World Tribe is collaborating with West Indian Revelation, led by longtime national recording artist Calvin "Fuzz" Samuel, for a set that's sure to include Afro-beat, funk, reggae and more.

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Person2Person closes the Aug. 7 jazz day of music at 8 p.m. on the mainstage. The group is a cross-generational collaboration between saxophonists Eric Person and Houston Person, who are unrelated to each other. Eric Person has performed and recorded with many legends in jazz, rock and funk, while Houston Person is a legendary part of the lineage of soul jazz tenor saxophone masters, according to festival organizers.

The Aug. 7 musical lineup also includes jazz veterans Cat’s A Bear, Stephen Trohoske’s ElectroHOPE Ensemble and Buffalo-based Latin music specialists Sol Y Sombra. Erie bassist and composer Trohoske has assembled an eclectic group of musicians, including Brewer and other players from Erie, Chicago, Buffalo and the U.K.

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The first day of the festival includes two blues-based films presented by the Film Society of Northwestern Pennsylvania. "St. Louis Blues," a 1929 short by W.C. Handy, and "Deep Blues," a 1992 documentary by Robert Mugge, are set for screening starting at 8:30 p.m. at the McCain Amphitheater, located beside the new metal slides at Frontier Park, down the hill from the LEAF community building. "Deep Blues" stars Robert Palmer and includes late north Mississippi blues musicians R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, who appeared at the Erie festival in 1996.

Also this year, the Erie Dance Consortium has helped the festival organize a series of dance performances and workshops for Aug. 6-7 at the amphitheater near the new slides, said festival board member and artistic director John Vanco. Anchoring the dance presentations is Djapo, the African dance and drumming troupe from Djapo Cultural Arts Institute in Cleveland. The Saturday entertainment will end with a fire dance by Jennifer Dennehy and Samantha Cyparski at the mainstage field from 9 to 9:30 p.m.

Vanco said the poetry readings Aug. 6 have also been extended with an open mic program emceed by Mabel Howard, "similar to the presentations she manages at 1020 Collective." An expanded lineup of visual artists, craftspeople and environmental organizations will also be present in The Village, Vanco said.

Some breweries from the Lake Erie Ale Trail and regional food trucks also will be at the festival.

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Vanco said the biggest challenge in organizing the 30th Erie Blues & Jazz Festival was getting enough financial support to put on the type of program people have come to expect. The festival relies on corporate sponsors, donations and volunteers to run smoothly.

Highmark and Allegheny Health Network were the biggest donors this year, but several longstanding sponsors cut back on their support, Vanco said in an email.

"Despite its unwavering popularity, the future of the event is in question," Vanco said. "A small cadre of volunteers make this weekend happen, and some of us are ready to slow down. I am very hopeful that a younger generation of arts and music enthusiasts will step up to take the festival into the future, and encourage people who are interested in being a part of it to contact us."

Coming at end of August:Tall Ships Erie 2022 festival to feature returning ships, Bayfront attractions for families