2008 – 2009 Season Review!!
August 2008, The Carnival of the Animals – It was a joy to collaborate with the brilliant pianist Frederick Chui on a chamber piano/voice version of Saint Saens’ Carnival of the Animals. I was a bit familiar with the music, especially the famous “Swan” movement, but I’d never heard the piano reduction until Frederick played through them in the comfort of his home on a balmy July evening. I took extensive notes then went home to write. After the rather intense writing I’d been doing with Jimi and Mr. B, and Oh Hudson, it was sheer pleasure to dive into the whimsical world of the fourteen animals (including “The Pianist”). I’m very pleased with the result, and so have been the audiences. We look forward to performing Carnival of the Animals again this summer, and I hope to bring my text to orchestras across the country. Please see the poetry section for a sample.
The 2008 – 09 season started in Gillette, Wyoming with a week-long Spanish language and arts residency. I brought along Neruda, Violeta Parra, Sintesis, Orishas, Orquestra Harlow, Llasa, and many other wonderful artists to the young people there. We contextualized Spanish language to their lived world and the kids really dug into it. I’ll be back in October 09 for a continuation and development of the process. I also worked with their International Club, a group of kids born in different, (mostly Latin) countries, for a funky celebration of culture. Big ups to teacher and project coordinator Renee Fritzen for having the vision and energy to make a unique place where these kids can feel empowered.
My involvment with the Alliance for a New Humanity continues to deepen. I’ve been invited to help produce the next conference in Guatemala, September 2 –5. In February I brought my fifteen year-old daughter Raina with me to Guatemala to scout venues for the conference. We spent a day at Tikal, one of the most important centers of Mayan culture – a phenomenally complex and rich city/state unfolded before us, half excavated for exploration, half buried in the rainforest. The theme of the conference is the Dawn of the New Humanity as it will feature the arts and philosophy of the indiginous people. We will have a concert at the Teatro Nacional on September 2nd. Please visit www.anhglobal.org for more information. Hope to see you at one of these events.
We brought Brooklyn to it’s feet! Sofrito! with Larry Harlow and the Latin Legends Band featuring Yomo Toro played to a 1500 person house the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts. Luckily I chose that gig to videotape a new demo. Check out the video page to see it! Sofrito! is still going. We are currently in negotiations to bring the show to Miami, Puerto Rico, Chicago, and Latin America. In other Sofrito! news, Larry Harlow received a special award from the governors of the Latin Grammy’s for his lifetime achievement, way to go Harlow…and… Bobby Sanabria was nominated for his second Grammy Award for his big band album. Check out the new Sofrito! video on the website.
In November I was invited to the Alliance for a New Humanity’s Barcelona Forum where I gave a poetry reading along with Deepak Chopra, and then accompanied him on guitar. It was a beautiful night. I also snuck into a corner with the extended Chopra family and told Aesop’s classic The Fisherman and His Wife to Deepak’s bored-to-tears grandchildren – that was real fun. I hadn’t known Barcelona before, the old city, Gaude’s Sagrada Familia, the hip, open vibe…one slick town.
It isn’t every day that you get to make history, even a little history. But that is what happened from January 6th – 10th at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s “Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola” when they presented their first ever spoken word artist. I brought my Poetic License Band to the club for a wonderful week of my City of Dreams project – latin azz and poetry. We had great houses, grooving music, and hip audiences that were ready to hear our mix of text and tone. We will do a repeat performance January 5 – 9th, 2010 – please come out! You can hear and see City of Dreams on the website.
In January I led a workshop at the International Performing Arts for Youth conference in Cleveland, on the artists’ process in creating new work for young audiences. We had a lively discussion that took a look at the “biography” of a piece from first idea, through development, and workshops, to the stage, and finally touring.
It is 2009, the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the river that bears his name. My long-form poem “Oh Hudson” premiered last season at The Egg in Albany had a tour to several venues in the Hudson Valley. The poem, along with performances by Mark O’Connor, Don Byron, and DBR, was presented at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center, the Paramount Theater in Peekskill, and two other upstate venues. This summer I will read it at the Blessing of the Fleet alongside Governor Paterson, the World Science Festival program “The Hudson Since Henry” at the New York Historical Society on June 11th. www.worldsciencefestival.com, at the Mohonk Festival of the Arts, and in my hometown of Nyack.
In March I had the good fortune to return to the Universidad Autonoma of Madrid to teach a new workshop I’ve been developing called “The Music of Your Dreams”, an experiential exploration of composition and self-expression. This was a new iteration of a workshop I did with my Swiss brother Andreas Gerber back in 2007. The music of your dreams is just that, what do you hear at night, or, what music do you wish you could play, or, is there a sound you have imagined but never heard? We built up a lot of group trust and then jumped into the project of making people’s dreams into reality. The group was comprised of twenty 2nd year masters students in the music therapy program run by my former student, Alicia Lorenzo. Whoa. There was such creativity, courage and love in the room for the three days of the workshop -- it made me want to teach this work more and more. After a hiatus from the world of workshops I am now eager to get back into it – and this format feels just right.
Right after the workshop, I mean, immediately afterwards, I went into a recording studio with my Spanish brother, Jose Maria Marquez (also known by his spiritual name Gopala), to record a CD of his poetry. In five hours we recorded 19 pieces. It was deeply satisfying to sit with the piano and guitar to listen to, and accompany, Gopala’s poems. Keep an eye out for sample tracks coming to the website soon.
Also keep an eye out for a new CD project with original poetry by myself and Alliance for a New Humanity brothers Arsenio Rodriguez and Deepak Chopra. We went into the studio in December with Daniel Kelly on piano, Erik Lawrence on flute and sax, and my son Jake on the cello. The CD is a suite of pieces that explore the theme of transcendent love. The disk will available by summer.
Every once in a while I get invited to speak at an event that falls into none of the categories I know – the Guiding Lights Weekend in Seattle was one of them. Convened by the extraordinary Eric Lui to nuture, invigorate, and inspire mentors from all walks of life, the weekend was a marvel of good will and positive energy. I met there Chris Jordan, the photographer who has documented pollution in stunningly graphic ways, Mark Roth, a neuroscientist (and MacArthur Fellow) who explores the region between life and death, something he calls “suspended animation”, and a Marine drill sargent from my old neighborhood in the Bronx who had us commanding his Marines to “RIGHT FACE!, ABOUT FACE!, LEFT FACE!!” My workshop/playshop/funkshop was well appreciated, and I got to the top of the Space Needle too.
Over the past few seasons I have developed a wonderful relationship with the McCallum Theater in Palm Desert, CA. In January Daniel Kelly and I brought MytholoJazz to them for an outreach tour. Orpheus and Eurydice came to jazzy life for 6000 kids that week, and we got to enjoy the desert in mid-Winter too.
This April 4th I presented a “work-in-progress” performance of an exciting new work titled “Wounded Splendor”, a suite of poems and monologues about nature and pollution set to music by Daniel Kelly and video by Dan Hartnett. Wounded Splendor was/is generously commissioned by the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center – a place like no other I’ve known, charged with creativity and social accountability. We will present the World Premiere next May 7th with a full production that will then be represented by Bernstien Artists for touring. There are images from the show in the Gallery section of the website, and a preliminary video as well. Wounded Splendor is my love song to the Earth, and it was a special pleasure to build a siginificant outreach component of the project with students, professors, scientists, activists and school kids. Online:http://claricesmithcenter.umd.edu/2009/c/performances/performance?rowid=9270
The frog has legs! The Frog Bride, that is. In the past several months the show has played at The Tribeca Performing Arts Center, The Krannert Center at U. of Illinois, New Jersery PAC, The Wexner Center at U. of Ohio, Columbus, and Anchorage, Alaska for a 11 performances. We’ve also had a remarkable and extensive tour at the Lincoln Center Institute for the entire year. Yes indeed, the frog has legs!
I’d always heard that my Puerto Rican family had roots in the Canary Islands, and now I know for sure that it is true. In December I took a trip to Tenerife, then a long car ride to a tiny seaside mountain village (everytown is like that because the islands are volcanic), called Los Silos for a delightful three-day storytelling festival. The venues were the local church, the old cloister, the hospital conference center, the tiny vestibules of people’s homes, everywhere there were stories. The streets and town square were lit by long strings of amber Christmas lights and were filled with people listening and laughing, singing and enjoying life in ways that seems particular to that enchanted place and time. I performed exclusively in Spanish for the first time and found that, though there were a few mistakes here and there, by and large the stories came to life. I learned that my Grandmother’s maiden name “Rosario” is extremely common there, and more importantly I heard a dialect that was the missing link between the Castillian Spanish I know from Madrid and the lyrical Spanish of Puerto Rico and Cuba. I recognized the melodious sweetness and knew in my bones that my people had come from this place.
Other significant gigs: Indiana Story Arts performance, Fort Lauderdale BookFest, the Los Angeles Music Center, The Calgary International Children’s Festival, The Skirball Center (LA), the Latino Psychologists Association, and about 50 schools in the NY Metro area.
If you got this far, you are a true fan. Thanks for all your support!
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