Last Saturday, June 12, we held a concert in Boston.
"Singing For The Planet" featured the Latin Jazz of Mili Bermejo, Warren Senders (that's WarrenS to you!) performing Hindustani music, and the great Jazz singer Dominique Eade — almost three hours of singing! And the best part of it was that we raised a little over eight hundred dollars for www.350.org.
This was the second of what I hope will be many such concerts. Last year I put on a huge show as part of the International Day of Climate Awareness on October 24. "Playing For The Planet" had six different acts and went on for almost four hours.
Everybody agreed that while it was fun, they thought it went on a little too long. Furthermore, the logistics of arranging six different performing groups was just too daunting. Three? Three I could handle. So I made some calls to some friends in the singing world...
Follow me below the flip for a full concert report with photographs and video!
The weeks leading up to the event had not been easy ones. My father-in-law became seriously ill, and I put in quite a bit of time getting things worked out so that my wife and daughter could get to India in time to see him before he passed. It was complicated. My volunteer sound man bailed on me and I had to find someone at the last minute. That was complicated, too.
But eventually everything that had to be done got done. I picked up the sound system a day earlier, and brought it in to Boston on Saturday afternoon along with all the other stuff a concert producer is responsible for. Things like: clipboards with sign-up sheets; tickets; extra posters, tape, marker; "volunteer" badges; rugs (when I sing, I sit cross-legged on the floor, so a rug is an absolute necessity); a change of clothing; a five-gallon jug of water and a bunch of reusable plastic glasses; a cash box; forty dollars in fives (tickets were $20 regular and $15 for students/seniors — I knew I'd need them); extension cords; copies of my CDs to sell; concert programs (two separate pages — more on that later); oh, the list seemed endless.
The last fortnight had seen me keeping a vigil on my website, checking for the frequency of hits on the event page. Advance ticket orders had been slow, and I was worried. Things finally started to heat up around Thursday, and by then it was too late for worrying to do any good.
My volunteers showed up and I set them to work. Put up the speakers. Connect these cords. Write "TONIGHT" on these posters and tape them up all over the neighborhood. Set up chairs. Not like that. Like this. No, like this. Fortunately, the volunteer coordinator is a woman of infinite resource and sagacity, so I was able to hand off those responsibilities to her and watch as things unfolded. At 4:45 some people walked in to buy tickets, saying they were sure it would sell out, and they wanted to be certain they'd get in. That cheered me up.
The sound man arrived and set to work. What a lucky break; he was a sympatico professional with a free night, and when he'd heard it was a benefit for 350.org, he promptly waived any fees. By 5:45 we were ready for sound check, and we were done fifteen minutes before showtime — right on schedule.
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Here is the concert program:
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People were still entering at 7:00; at 7:10 the hall was almost completely full, and it was with a huge sense of relief that I walked to the front of the room and announced the first performer. I've known Mili Bermejo for almost thirty years, but I hadn't heard her perform for ten or twelve. She and Dan Greenspan, her bassist and husband, are as telepathically close as it's possible to be; they started with a beautiful duet.
The second song added pianist Doug Johnson, and this trio's extraordinary empathy was a joy to hear. Mili's voice is deep and rich, and her singing is suffused with powerful emotion. Listen to these two pieces and hear for yourself:
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Alert readers will notice that at the bottom of the concert program it says "This concert is dedicated to Steven Kimball." I had prepared a second handout to explain that:
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The people at Corporate Accountability International are some of my heroes, and I was pleased to have Ruby Bolaria, one of their representatives, come and talk to the crowd. They passed out some petitions, collected some signatures, and gave everyone crucial information. If you're not familiar with their work, you owe it to yourself to check them out.
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And then it was time for my set. I won't say much about it except to remark that I greatly enjoy working with Akshay Navaladi, whose tabla accompaniment is very sympathetic. Priti Chakravarti is a fine and supportive harmonium player, and my old friend and colleague Harriotte Hurie had kindly volunteered to play the stringed drone instrument called tamboura.
I presented two pieces: a full-length performance of the classical raga Puriya, running about forty minutes total and covering three melodically linked songs in different rhythms, and a lighter song, a North Indian folksong in the Pahadi language. I've included the second item here; if you're determined, you can hear the long raga performance at my website, once I get it uploaded.
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In this concert as well as the October 24 event I made it a point to find organizations which are doing good work, and invite them to have representatives tell the audience about upcoming actions. During the second intermission, we heard from Noah Lawes of the Hands Across the Sand campaign; he gave some background on the planned national action and invited all us MA residents to the beach action against offshore drilling, which will be coming up on the 26th of this month.
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Finally we heard Dominique Eade, someone I have always considered a musician of the very highest caliber since we first met thirty years ago. One of the minor tragedies of life as a professional musician is that one all too rarely gets a chance to hear one's colleagues perform — aside from a few songs performed at a private function earlier this year, I hadn't had a chance to hear Dominique sing since 1980! Accompanied by Will Slater on bass and Will Graefe on guitar, she did a delightful combination of originals and standard tunes, of which this version of Hoagy Carmichael's "Buttermilk Sky" is a great example:
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Mili Bermejo, Dominique Eade, Warren Senders
Dominique Eade, Will Slater, Will Graefe, Warren Senders, Harriotte Hurie, Mili Bermejo, Dan Greenspan, Priti Chakravarti, Akshay Navaladi
And then we said goodnight and packed up.
After the dust settled I had a chance to do a count, and it worked out that we'd met our expenses with about eight hundred dollars left over. The 501(c)3 organization that covers 350.org is called the Sustainable Markets Foundation, and I sent them three cashier's checks for $270 each (each artist thus gets a receipt for tax purposes) in Wednesday's mail.
So (to answer Meteor Blades), that's what I've been doing lately.
Thank you for listening. The full concert will be available for your enjoyment at my website within a few days. I'd be delighted to see you there!
Update: While we were enjoying the music and feeling good about ourselves, Patrickz posted a very important diary: I can haz environ-meta? Please make sure to go there, read what he has to say, and rec/tip appropriately.
And because Patrickz told me to do it, and told me how to do it, I'm now attaching the eKos widget:
Get the eKos widget code!