From Ecuador

This in from Musicworks founder Jesse Neuman who is in Ecuador right now.
Hey all
Just wanted to drop a line and let you know that all is well here at the equator. Some hilights:
12 hours of travel (how do you say "flight delayed" in Spanish?
13 hours of sleep the following night (human again)
basically I'm living alone in the 75% finished palace amidst the Pachacama property (all of the houses in Ecuador are 75% finished and 100% of them will not be finished. However, I'm enjoying the bare bulbs, mattress on the floor, and 6 rooms of non-furnitured echo for my trumpet playing)
gave some private lessons in my kitchen to Clarita, Maria Jose, and Fernando. It's so great to see how much they have improved since last year.
my trombone class wound up improvising to a shuffled ipod, including: The Neptunes, Duke Ellington, Broken Social Scene, and Lucinda Williams. well done
my long lost student Julian has returned from Colombia!
$1.60 lunches including soup, chicken, rice, and drink. yum.
gave Lassie, the ancient german shepherd a bath (too many flies). she did not enjoy it.
felt great to donate books, instruments, funds, etc. There is such a need here...

Connected!

Hello, modern age. Blogging for nearly 600 entries, running Olivia's Save the Gulf page, and working on Bouler Architecture's web page, I felt pretty tech-forward. But today's flowers are tomorrow's compost, and technology moves swiftly. Olivia now has her own official website thanks to the massive assistance by Jesse Neuman, who, in addition to playing jazz trumpet and teaching in Central America, can whip out a site in mere hours. No longer will I have to send pages of links to folks-- it's all there! But wait, there's more. After resisting the Twitter trend, my students have convinced me that Olivia needs to start tweeting. Hey, if BirdgirlLiv wants to tweet, and folks want to read it, it seems like a natural development. That is, of course, until the next new thing.

Musicworks: Fundraising Event

Musicworks founder and jazz trumpet player Jesse Neuman is preparing for a third trip to teach music to underprivileged children in Latin America. To raise money for the event, Olivia and Jackson will be joining him on stage for a jazz concert at The Living Room in NYC on January 22nd, at 4:00 pm. It's a very child-friendly event, with audience participation for everyone.

Meet the Sea Tuckers!

What a day for a fundraiser! The Seatuck event yesterday was a sunny affair, with families of all ages turning out to support this local nature preserve. The postcard exhibition grew as the day progressed as artists added to the display, and author Paul Rodriguez was on hand to read from his book, Goldysocks and the Five Bayous. A portion of sales of Rodriguez's book go straight to helping the bayous of Louisiana. The highlight for us was the performance of the Sea Tuckers, who, under the direction of Jon Pereira and Jesse Neuman, played a series of songs inspired by New Orleans jazz. Thanks to all who volunteered, donated artwork, and attended this event.

Meet the Sea Tuckers!

Plans for the Seatuck fundraiser on September 4th are moving right along with bird postcards arriving and the press releases being sent out. Don't worry though, there's still a week to participate in the open call for artwork. Send your postcard-sized bird images to Seatuck, PO Box 31, Islip, NY 11751.
Meanwhile, the jazz band, aptly named the Sea Tuckers, has been holding weekly rehearsals in my living room-- love that! Every living room should be able to host a nine man band at least once in its life. With musicians Jesse Neuman and Jon Pierra directing, it's been amazing to see how quickly the group pulled itself together and worked through their playlist.
Looking forward to a fun event and to raising money for a great conservation organization.

Winter Concerts

This past week was full of music. Jackson rocked out at his winter concert and Olivia had a blast playing sax with jazz trumpet player and educator Jesse Neuman at his fundraising concert this Saturday at the Bowery Poetry Club.

Looking to volunteer in Equador to teach his second seminar in music to underprivledged children, Jesse created a fantastic afternoon in his efforts to raise money. With an impressive enemble of seasoned and successful musicians, Jesse brought his student crew of Olivia, Eve, Jordan, and Pauline to the stage. From solos to songstresses, everyone had a hand in making great music and making the dreams of children in Equador possible. If you'd like to support Jesse's program, please check out his site.

At the show I picked up the new CD by trombonist Ryan Keberle called Heavy Dreaming. I have loved Keberle's trombone since the night at Barbes in Brooklyn when my head was a mere inches away from his horn at that very petite venue. Although few jazz bands are led by the trombonist, this CD is a conversation in sound that might change that.

Musicworks: Check it Out

Musicworks, jazz trumpet player Jesse Neuman's new educational project, is hosting a benefit this weekend at the Bowery Poetry Club to raise funds for a second volunteer seminar with Fundacion Brass Band del Ecuador, a school and community safe haven serving underprivileged students and families in Quito. The event on Saturday, January 23rd at 2:00 pm is open to adults and children, and features members of Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, Brooklyn Qawwali Party, Imogen Heap, Michael Bolton, Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Ursa Minor, Bjork, Josh Ritter, and the Saturday Night Band.

Oh, and did I mention that our very own Olivia will be playing sax on a James Brown song, Cold Sweat?

Music in Film

We all know that when 'that scary music' starts up, another frightful moment is lurking around the corner, and anytime the "Chariots of Fire" theme starts up we can't help but picture the present moment in dramatic slow-motion. How does music influence the context in which we understand a movie? Composers and film-scorers have become increasingly more sophisticated in manipulating tone, mood, tension, emotion, drama, and irony by selecting and creating sound to influence their audience. Jazz trumpet player (and former guest blogger) Jesse Neuman presented his MUSICWORKS workshop on the use of music in film , offering students an insightful look at the importance of a soundtrack to a movie's meaning.

Louise Millmann: Collage Artist

Extra pictures today to try to convey the very exciting collage show at Ripe Art Gallery. The opening today proved to be unusual in a number of ways.

Our friend (and guest blogger for BDG) Jesse Neuman came out from the city to give the children a master class music lesson, which was a treat for us all. Afterwards, I brought him along for artist Louise Millmann's opening in Greenlawn, NY. Millmann has been busy. This past Thursday, her work was in the group show A Book About Death, an homage to Ray Johnson. From what I hear, lines snaked out the door with gallery-goers waiting to get in.

Today Louise Millmann blew me away with her clever and incredibly executed images-- mixing nostalgia with Dada and Cindy Sherman with an incredible dose of her cunning wit. By Photoshopping herself into images from Life Magazine and integrating text, line, and color, the images had both a uniqueness and a familiarity. Whew. Although Louise and I had done an art swap recently-- an etching of mine for a collage of hers-- I simply had to have another one of her works. So did Jesse. The hardest part was choosing. In the end, I liked this one-- it reminded me of constructivist graphic geometry with the humor of a dog looking up the woman's skirt.

I am fortunate to know Louise since 1984, having grown up in the same town and traveled in the same circles. Even then she took pictures, performed impersonation acts, and made indie films. Fast forward years later and we find ourselves teaching together in Jericho High School. It wasn't until the opening that I realized how our lives have wound themselves in similar paths. Person after person who walked into Louise's show was a person I knew from my distant past in Northport all the way to my very present in Jericho. I ran into Nelson Rowe, an animation artist I haven't seen in in 23 years, and then Suzanne Valenza, who sits two desks over from me at work. It was a collage of my own life, both nostalgic and familiar.

A Global Perspective

Imagine if you can, opening your email and finding something that inspires you to share it with others. No, it's not a prayer that you have to send to ten of your best friends RIGHT NOW, but an account of a recent trip to Equador. Jazz trumpet player Jesse Neuman of Brooklyn Qawwali Party, spent the month of July in Equador teaching music to children. What he shared with them, and with me in this story, is incredibly moving.
By the way, you can catch Jesse and the Brooklyn Qawwali Party at the Out of Doors program at Lincoln Center next Wednesday, April 12th at 7:30 pm.

Buenas--

An amazing day today. We went to play a concert at the Miraflores community within their central park (apparently they 'owned' the land before the city built the park, so now they live in a sort of
'reservation' and work...for very little...for the park). These people are so poor---I mean, shacks and chickens and dirty faces, like in the commercials, but they are so warm and beautiful. I got there early in a cab, and a little boy literally ran up to me, touched my scruffy face, and asked me why my hair was blonde! They rang this siren that is a signal for them to all gather by the community house, which is like a broken down barn, with one outlet dangling from the ceiling and zero furnishings save for a bench or two, and lots of people gathered. They were all a little shy but as soon as the truck with the instruments arrived they all wanted to help unload it. We sat in a circle on the floor and talked and played for the better part of an hour (amidst kids who were 3 and 4 up through 12 and 13). I showed them the instruments and how they work, we pretended to use all
of our limbs to play the drums and then 4 kids came up to try them for real. We tried the electric bass too, and at the end I had 9 girls up playing percussion. It was really fun, and felt pretty amazing to give the kids an experience that have never had and probably won't for a while if at all in the future.

Later in the afternoon, all of the students gathered at the school for a final concert featuring the various jazz ensembles. The kids were all standing in a big circle with drums and bass in the back. We played along with techno-tango in a trio, "Unravel" in a quartet, "What Reason" as a quintet, with two 'mujeres' for a popular spanish power ballad, and then with the bigger bands (Hottentot, Your Pleasure..., Batman, Watermelon Man, Canteloupe Island, and Too Kareemi). The kids took solos and were basically awesome. This 11 year old cornet player was amazing, and even the littlest kids were able to play with confidence. Afterwards I got to give Pedro Morales (who lives with his 5 brothers and sisters and parents in one room) a new silver trombone. He looked like he was walking on air, and must have thanked me a dozen times! When we were finished playing I felt like a celebrity/santa claus posing for pictures and hugs and pictures of hugs. Lila (whose undone braid revealed hair down to her knees) was almost in tears, and Joel begged his mother for a sixth posed photograph. I got so many hugs and thanks, but the best came from Maria Jose. This is a girl with no parents, no money, living with her aging grandparents and wearing the same clothes to school every day. She gave me a stuffed animal dog that says, "Un regalo con amor" (A gift with love)---the likes of which she probably hasn't in her own home. Wow.

I'm here for 4 more days, but finishing classes today somehow brought a palpable closure to this experience. So many of these kids have so little, and yet are more motivated, more positive, and more loving than others I have met with considerably "more" of everything. Life here is sometimes clumsy, spread a little thin, and certainly involves less 'stuff', but it has a warm and caring quality based on family and camaraderie that is dwarfs the richer and more developed ways I have known. I'll be sad to go and already thinking of my return.

Tea Lounge and the Barbarians

Last week, jazz trumpet player Jesse Neuman invited Olivia to sit in with eight-plus member band The Barbarians at the Tea Lounge in Brooklyn on the night of their last performance. Her solo is about two thirds into the first song. Even Jackson got into the act with some swift dance moves to the song "Nice Feet." The place was packed-- people lounging on the couches with their laptops, others crowding the bar, and a healthy dose of Barbarian fans. Founded by Tony Barba, a tenor sax player, the band plays some awesome original rowdy jazz pieces mixed with covers of "Everybody's Working for the Weekend" and my personal favorite, "Barracuda". Barba, now moving to Chicago, was roasted by night's end, lofted high in the air with drummer Brook Martinez leading the crowd in chanting his name. It was a great way to celebrate the music these talented musicians have created over the years as both the Barbarians and the ongoing Brooklyn Qawwali Party.