SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Give Terry and Jan Lease some credit. They really know how to throw a bash — a bluegrass bash, that is.

Sunday marked the finale of the 21st annual Greater Downstate Indoor Bluegrass Festival, which has been promoted since its inception by the Leases and their organization, Midwest Bluegrass Festivals.

The promise of great things to come might have surfaced early for procrastinators who waited too long to obtain hotel accommodations at the Crown Plaza, a 14-story hotel where the festival was held. Those late callers discovered there was no room at the inn — the posh hotel was booked to the hilt for the three-day bluegrass weekend.

But early birds and procrastinators alike discovered that the 2007 edition of the downstate event was a fiddlers’ dream, a place where the cream of bluegrass fiddle players indeed rose to the top.

Legendary Bobby Hicks gave a one-day fiddle workshop and also played on stage. His performance of “Jerusalem’s Ridge,” with string wizard Michael Cleveland and his band Flamekeeper ripped the roof off the 1,200-seat hotel ballroom where the concerts were held. Hicks then took the spotlight with his famous “nothing but double-stops” version of “Maiden’s Prayer.”

Later in the evening, Hicks would return to the stage to perform “Roanoke” with Nothin’ Fancy and their very fancy conservatory-trained fiddle player, Chris Sexton.

“That was a lot of fun,” Hicks said Saturday while giving test rides to some old fiddles for sale in a guitar and instrument show, held in conjunction with the festival. “Those guys (Cleveland and Sexton) are great.”

But, let’s slam this in reverse for a second — back to Nothin’ Fancy and fiddler/violinist Sexton. He had the crowd roaring with his eclectic, anything-goes version of “Orange Blossom Special,” which has become a staple closer for the Virginia-based band.

Any thoughts that the fiddle fireworks had subsided when Friday’s final curtain fell quickly learned otherwise Saturday afternoon, when the Grascals opened the day’s shows. Jimmy Mattingly, the group’s regular fiddler, was on a 9-day sabbatical with his former boss, Garth Brooks. The previous Saturday, Jason Carter filled in with the group, but premiere fiddler Aubrey Haney got the call to ride to Illinois with the band.

But it wasn’t lightning speed or double shuffles that won the crowd over to Haney. Performing a bit of trickery, Haney undid the hair on his fiddle bow, stretched it over the top of the strings and had the bow stick itself running under the body of the fiddle. Haney told the audience he decided to try that so he could have bow hair making contact with all four strings at once. He literally sounded like a string quartet with his inspired version of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.

Fiddlers’ paradise continued to unfold with Rhonda Vincent’s Hunter Barry’s high-energy fiddling and then, with Ronnie Stewart from J.D. Crowe’s fine band, gliding flawlessly in and out, above and below the band’s lyrics. And give Stewart lots of credit for unabashed fortitude. Stewart noted he had seen Bobby Hicks in the audience earlier in the evening and sang the praises of Hick’s version of “Maiden’s Prayer.” Then, Stewart turned around and did his own soulful version of the old Bob Wills classic.

Have I mention, that this particular festival also had guitars, banjos, basses and mandolins? Of course, it did. But this 21st annual edition of Terry and Jan Lease’s big Springfield festival turned out to be the Year of the Fiddler.

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