MEDFORD, Ore. -- John Trudeau, who founded the Britt Festival in 1963, has died in Portland at the age of 81.

Trudeau and a friend, Sam McKinney, came to Jacksonville in 1962 while searching for an outdoor music festival site.

They found good acoustics at a site homesteaded in the 1850s by Peter Britt and the next summer, Trudeau conducted the first performance of the Britt Festival Orchestra on a plywood stage with lights hung inside tin cans.

Angela Warren, artistic administrator of Britt's Classical Festival, said Trudeau was known "for his incredible passion for music and motivation that was contagious."

The Britt Festival was the first of its kind in the Northwest, and over the years expanded to include jazz, folk, country, rock and dance in a season that runs from early June to past Labor Day.