Hills to Be Alive With the Sound of Music

A nonprofit group that seeks to purchase the rolling hills above Ventura as permanent open space is hosting a music festival fund-raiser next month, featuring singer-songwriters Jackson Browne and Jack Johnson.

Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen, a country-rock acoustic group, will also play at the Ventura Hillsides Music Festival, which will take place from 2 p.m. to dusk Sept. 13. Tickets, at $40 each, go on sale Saturday.

Proceeds will benefit the Ventura Hillsides Conservancy, formed in April after the defeat of Measure A, a November 2002 ballot initiative that proposed 1,390 homes on the hills that form a backdrop to the city.

Brooke Ashworth, president of the conservancy board, said organizers thought the festival would be a fun way to begin the group’s major fund-raising campaign.

“There is just tremendous development pressure all along the Southern California coast ... and people feel like they want to preserve and save what it was that brought them to these places to begin with,” Ashworth said. “I think that’s true both for the musicians and the people involved in the conservancy.”

The artists were chosen, in part, for their connection to the area, said conservancy spokesman Stephen Svete. Browne has been a resident of the Central Coast for years. His bass player and co-producer on his latest album, Kevin McCormick, lives in Ventura, as do Hillman and Pedersen. Johnson of Santa Barbara has spent years surfing Ventura’s beaches.

They will play in a natural amphitheater at Arroyo Verde Park. Ashworth said the venue can accommodate 4,000 people.

The conservancy has about 200 members and is in the middle of a membership drive. The group is working to complete an inventory of the hillside land to determine which parcels it would buy first, Ashworth said.

“We have a lot of work ahead of us,” she said.

Stretching from the Ventura River to the east side of town, the land encompasses more than 6,000 acres and has multiple owners, including many members of the Lloyd family, which proposed the hillside development plan.

Tickets for the festival will be available at Salzer’s Music and Great Pacific Iron Works in Ventura, Blue Sky Music in Ojai and all Ticketmaster outlets. A limited number of Gold Circle Package seats will be available for $150 each only on the Ventura Hillsides Conservancy Web site, www.venturahillsides.org.