Mayfair Festival Of The Arts has always been viewed as an unofficial kickoff to the Lehigh Valley's busy festival season. Mayfair, now in its 29th year, has continued to evolve much like the changing seasons it heralds.

The four-day event runs May 22 - 25 at the Allentown Fairgrounds. The festival was relocated from its longtime location in Allentown's Cedar Beach park three years ago.

The move was implemented because of flooding concerns at the park. While May might be known for spring flowers, it often brings heavy showers. Mayfair was a victim of poor weather in past seasons.

The flooding troubles at Cedar Beach not only hurt attendance, it also caused damage to vendors' and exhibitors' wares and artwork. The heavy foot traffic generated by the event also caused wear and tear on the park grounds.

The relocation to the Agri-Plex and west end area of the Fairgrounds has enabled Mayfair to utilize indoor and outdoor spaces and allowed the organization to be less dependent upon weather conditions. The flooding and weather troubles at the park had jeopardized the future of the event.

In 2015, Mayfair is changing once again. Arlene Daily, Executive Director of Mayfair, Inc. noticed that music specific festivals were popular.

"One of the things that I've done since I came here a little over three years ago is spend a lot of time going to other festivals," explains Daily.

"What I heard in the community and from the [Mayfair] board of directors was the community was really missing the high-quality visual arts that used to be at Mayfair. We definitely wanted to bring that back. So, I started going around to visual arts festivals to see what was being done differently."

Daily spoke with artists at art festivals and received valuable feedback, which laid the foundation for improvements made to that portion of Mayfair. The quality and number of artists since the move to the Fairgrounds and during Daily's tenure has markedly improved.

The year prior to Daily's hiring at Mayfair there were 47 artists' booths at the event. Last year, there were 125 artists. Daily is proud of the caliber of artists that now choose to exhibit at Mayfair. Many artists were selling pieces for thousands of dollars.

Daily next decided to tackle the music portion of Mayfair, which has led to this year's launch of the "festivals within the festival" format.

This year there will be seven genre-specific music festivals in addition to the visual arts festival.

"People love to go to a bluegrass festival or they love to go to a jazz festival. The Philly Folk Festival is a big draw around here," says Daily. "So, I sort of applied that concept onto the program that I did for the stages this year."

The music genres represented at this year's Mayfair are: classic rock, jazz, country, bluegrass and folk, and Celtic.

A modest admission charge will enable a fest-goer's entry into Mayfair's offerings for the four days of the event.

"Which is amazing because you go to a bluegrass festival or a folk festival and they could be anywhere from $40 to $150 to get in and ours is a four-day pass. So, you get seven music festivals plus the visual arts festival for $5," explains Daily.

For the Mayfair perfomance schedule and artists exhibiting: mayfair.org