As part of the weekend’s Lavender Tour, Café Luna will offer a “Lavender Under the Stars” wine garden outside the café from 5 to 10 p.m. Saturday, July 11.

Tickets are $5. The event is a benefit for the Solar Initiative, a project of Sustainable Vashon that was recently responsible for the installation of solar panels on the Land Trust Building.

Wines from Sweetbread Cellars, Palouse Winery and Vashon Winery will be offered in addition to musical entertainment from Vashon Free Range Folk Choir at 6 p.m. and guitarist Timothy Bertsch at 7:30 p.m.

The choir, composed of almost 40 Islanders, is led by Island maestro Shane Jewell.

Newly formed, it has already performed a number of well-received concerts on the Island. The choir’s eclectic repertoire includes folk and inspirational music from many cultures.

The choir’s goal, Jewell said, is to lift the spirits of listeners through music rooted in diverse places and traditions.

Bertsch plays electric guitar, acoustic guitar, harp guitar, parlor guitar, bass, mandolin and sitar, creating a sound  rooted in jazz, bebop, fusion, flamenco, rock, classical, new age, Celtic and Gypsy music.

He’s been a longstanding member of the rock group Jaded Mary and of the jazz outfit H.D. Fusion, which has played on Vashon before.

He brings to his music additional interests in lutherie, musical physics and jazz, all subsumed under a fascination with the spiritual.

“A seeker of lost knowledge and technologies, I am an eternal student of life and its expression,” said Bertsch. “My voice is of wood and steel. I am a composer, performer and expressionist.”

— Eric Horsting is a former Beachcomber arts editor who writes arts news for Café Luna.