The scene today: festivals and free nights

2016 — today

A festival of its own: In September 2016 Fort Wayne acquired the thing its music scene had never had: a destination festival. Middle Waves, created by community volunteers — Matt Kelley and Beth McAvoy among its co-chairs — and modeled on Des Moines's 80/35 festival, brought more than twenty national and regional acts to three stages at Headwaters Park on September 16–17, 2016, headlined by the Flaming Lips, with Sweetwater's local standing lending the new venture credibility with artists and agents. The festival ran at Headwaters in 2016, 2017, and 2018 — Lizzo played in 2018, before she was Lizzo — took a planned year off in 2019, lost its planned 2020 edition at the Electric Works campus to the pandemic, and returned at the Foellinger Theatre in June 2022. In the summer of 2023 the Embassy Theatre acquired Middle Waves to give it institutional permanence; under the Embassy it has settled into a one-day format at Headwaters Park's Lincoln Pavilion, reaching its tenth year in 2026. Around the festival stands the rest of the modern infrastructure this section has traced: the Clyde and its Club Room, the Embassy's Broadway and concert calendar, the Foellinger's summer season, the Philharmonic between the Embassy and Auer Hall, and the free local-music institution the Allen County Public Library ran for nearly twenty years — Rock the Plaza, some three hundred Saturday-night concerts of Fort Wayne bands from 2007 until its 2026 move to Electric Works as Rock the Works. The Current record carries the city's music as it stands each year; this history's point is the continuity underneath it: from a four-stop church organ in 1848 to a festival of its own, Fort Wayne's music has always been something its citizens organized for themselves.

Sources:

1. Middle Waves Music Festival (middlewaves.com/info) and Embassy Theatre releases (fwembassytheatre.org) — created 2016 by community volunteers; the Embassy Theatre's acquisition in the summer of 2023; the Headwaters Park Lincoln Pavilion home.
2. Mix magazine, "Making Waves, Founding a Festival" (July 19, 2016), and The Local FW, "What's Next for Middle Waves Music Festival?" — the September 16–17, 2016 first edition, the 80/35 model, the volunteer founding, and the editions of 2016–2018 and 2022 with attendance up to 5,000.
3. WPTA, "2026 Middle Waves Music Festival lineup announced" (March 6, 2026) — the festival's wanderings: Headwaters 2016–18, the 2019 cancellation, the lost 2020 Electric Works edition, Foellinger 2022, and the 2023 Embassy takeover.
4. Allen County Public Library / Rock the Works (Electric Works, 2026) — Rock the Plaza's run at the library from 2007 to 2026, nearly 300 concerts, and its 2026 move and renaming.