Music Ministry Revival part141 I (We) prophesy to the 4 winds of the heavens. Revival Angels come into the Music Ministry. Come, Spirit of Music
The moral climate in the Music neighborhood needs to to warmed by the Presence of God. "GOD'S great plan for the redemption of mankind is as much bound up to prayer for its prosperity and success as when the decree creating the movement was issued from the Father, bearing on its frontage the imperative, universal and eternal condition, "Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thy inheritance and the uttermost part of the earth for thy possession." In many places an alarming state of things has come to pass, in that the many who are enrolled in our churches are not praying men and women. E. M. Bounds The Music Neighborhood is in a depressed cycle.
Digital Music Panel Discussion - Pros and Cons of DRM
Digital rights management - Technologies to give content providers control over redistribution and access to material. Critics of these technologies use an technically more precise expansion, 'digital restrictions management'. Short for digital rights management, Click here: FORA.tv - The World Is Thinking a system for protecting the copyrights of data circulated via the Internet or other digital media by enabling secure distribution and/or disabling illegal distribution of the data. Typically, a DRM system protects intellectual property by either encrypting the data so that it can only be accessed by authorized users or marking the content with a digital watermark or similar method so that the content can not be freely distributed.
The Industrial Music Complex is experiencing a downward “I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God…. “Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world” I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us.”Martin Luther God, He proposes that men pray. The men are to pray in every place, in the church, in the closet, in the home, on sacred days and on secular days. All things and everything are dependent on the measure of men's praying. Prayer is the genius and mainspring of life. We pray as we live; we live as we pray. Life will never be finer than the quality of the closet. The mercury of life will rise only by the warmth of the closet. Persistent non-praying eventually will depress life below zero." --E. M. Bounds
Joel 1 :13Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God. 14Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD,
The Music Ministry Revival will sink or swim based on its teamwork. Could teamwork among the Music Ministry solve:
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Saturday, June 30, 2007
Music Ministry Revival part141
Ministry Revival. The Spirit of awakening come. Come, Music Ministry Revival, Music Ministry harvest angels come. Music Ministry...angels of revival come... awaken Lord. Send your glory. Send your glory... send your glory and change the atmosphere in the Music Ministry. Fire of God come. Light of God come. Go forth Light of God. Breathe ... wind of God, breathe into the Music Ministry, now in Jesus name. 
Music Ministry Revival is at hand. Music Ministry Revival is evidenced when Jesus makes an appearance in the Music neighborhood. The Music Ministry Revival will be evidenced by its impact on the Music neighborhood. The Music Ministry will impact the morale climate of the Music Neighborhood. 
Last week, Trans World Entertainment, which operates over 972 retail stores, announced their Q1 earnings — music sales were down by 21%. Music which represented 53% of their business a year ago, now represents 44%. Late last year, Tower records closed their doors for good. It was reportedin January, that 2006 overall CD sales fell by 5% from approx 619 million units to 588 million, with Independent stores feeling the brunt of the change, down by 18% and mass merchant sales down 4%. On the other hand, digital track sales in 2006 increased over 2005 by 65% to 582 million tracks. We all know that this was not enough to overcome the drop in CD sales. Regardless of any other business management issues, retail music stores are victims of the larger issues around consumer interest in traditional CDs. It will only get worse unless the labels and artists deliver new approaches to the traditional CD. Richard French
financial and moral market. Music Ministry Revival will raise the temperature in the Music neighborhood. The warmed morale climate will raise the spirit of the people in the Music neighborhood. Persistent prayer eventually will raise the spirit of the people. music penetrates your soul and truly raises the spirit higher. 
Eminent musicians have been eminent in the Music neighborhood. Prominent musicians dominate the Music Neighborhood. Eminent musicians trumps insufficient and insignificant pray in the Music Neighborhood. Tepid Wednesday night prayer is insufficient to fuel the heart of God towards the Music neighborhood. Straggly and struggling Music Ministry can not opportune God. A cold prayer closet can not be warmed by wet timber. The mercury of the Music neighborhood life will rise only by the warmth of the prayer closet. A prevailing wind of prayer stokes the fire of all night prayer. Prevailing prayer leaves an odor of smoke and a blanket of ash (sackcloth). Prevailing prayer will surrender the Music Neighborhood. "Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thy inheritance and the uttermost part of the earth for thy possession."
Friday, June 29, 2007
Nigeria's Audu Maikori Wins IYMEY award
Nigeria's Audu Maikori Wins IYMEY award
| The British Council |
Audu Maikori, CEO of Chocolate City, has emerged the Nigerian winner of the British Council's International Young Music Entrepreneur (IYMEY) of the Year award 2007.
The British Council presents the International Young Music Entrepreneur of the Year (IYMEY) each year to champion and celebrate the importance of creative entrepreneurs working in the field of music.
Nigeria: Audu Maikori Wins IYMEY award
Daily Trust (Abuja)
16 June 2007
Posted to the web 18 June 2007
Nasiru L. Abubakar
Audu Maikori, CEO of Chocolate City, has emerged the Nigerian winner of the British Council's International Young Music Entrepreneur (IYMEY) of the Year award 2007.
Audu, 32, is a law graduate from the University of Jos and his company, Chocolate City is an entertainment company that administers a record label, artist management, entertainment facility management, recording studio, events management and promotion as well as general consultancy work for clients. The company has won considerable success in the past two years with artists Jeremiah Gyang and Djinee (who won best artist at the Nigerian Music Awards in 2006).
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The award attracted applications from across Nigeria from young people (25-35 years of age) working in different areas of music enterprise ranging from music promotion and production to artiste management and music journalism. Audu was one of 6 finalists for the award who made presentations and were interviewed by a panel of seasoned music industry practitioners. The judges were on the look out for a winner who must have shown his/her ability and innovative approach to the promotion of music in Nigeria, particularly in a commercial context, one who had the ability to demonstrate the potential to be a future leader of the music sector through their character, drive and ability, one who had an international outlook, and one who was keen to come to the UK to find out about the UK music sector, and to enjoy this shared experience with the rest of their fellow finalists.
The panel of judges was made up of Tunde Kuboye from Jazz 38, veteran jazz artist and promoter, Kenny Ogungbe, CEO of Kennis Music, music mogul and broadcaster; Olisa Adibuah of Cool FM/Storm Productions, Emem Ema, last year's winner of IYMEY and Denise Waddingham, Assistant Director British Council Lagos and British Council Nigeria's Head of Arts.
As the winner for Nigeria, Audu will contend with 9 other finalists from Egypt, India, Indonesia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Phillipines, Poland and Tanzania for the global IYMEY award. He will also participate in a ten-day tour of the UK music industry, which includes visits, meetings, and gigs in London and Manchester, the Glastonbury Festival and the London Calling trade exhibition, among other events.
Final selection of the worldwide winner will be through a presentation and interview session with an elite panel of UK music industry professionals.
International Young Music Entrepreneur of the Year (IYMEY) is an award designed by the British Council to champion and celebrate the notion of creative leadership; specifically the need to identify and nurture future leaders of the music industry.
The aim is to help sustain the development of the next generation of leaders within the creative sector while building awareness of the UK as a centre of creative thinking and entrepreneurship; a vital nexus of international networking and a place where musicians can always do business.
Channel O to Feature Kenya Music Series
Channel O to Feature Kenya Music Series
| Channel O |
Africa's leading music channel, Channel O, is getting ready to air a new show featuring Kenyan music. Channel O, which airs in Kenya through DStv, has asked for proposals for a show that strictly originates from Kenya and features 
mainly Kenyan artistes.
Kenya: Channel O to Feature Series
The Nation (Nairobi)
17 June 2007
Posted to the web 18 June 2007
Philip Mwaniki
Nairobi
Africa's leading music channel, Channel O, is preparing for an entertainment show featuring Kenyan music.
Channel O, which airs in Kenya through DStv, has asked for proposals for a show that strictly originates from Kenya and features mainly Kenyan artistes.
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"The Channel is looking to fund a series that is entertaining and exciting and producers are encouraged to break boundaries in terms of content and format design. The series should have a mass appeal and not only target the Channel O and DStv viewers," says Joseph Hundah, the MNet director of operations in sub-Saharan Africa.
"We are not seeking to imitate any existing format. We are looking for a format that will be completely new, and will have a distinct Kenyan and East African flavour. This concept should appeal emotionally and intellectually to the viewers," Hundah says.
Channel O has set aside US$60,000 (Sh4.1 million) towards the making of 13 episodes of a 24-minute weekly music show.
But, according to reports, the final budget will depend on the scope and scale of the proposed new format and the producer will be encouraged to find additional sponsorship to enhance their production budget. The producer must, however, liaise with Channel O on the sponsorship elements.
The deadline for submission of proposals is the end of June and, if a suitable format is found, Channel O aims to start production in August.
Proposals
The proposals should not be longer than 10 pages and must include a detailed creative treatment, summary format or synopsis, preliminary budget breakdown and a basic production time line.
One will also be expected to supply detailed resumes of the director, producer, writer and production manager. One must also have a registered company.Interested people can drop their works at the MultiChoice offices in Westlands, Nairobi. Kenyan producers and musicians have welcomed the idea, saying this is Kenya's turn to tell its story.
Mark Moss, a video cameraman who has worked with many Kenyan artistes, has called upon Kenyan artistes to take this initiative seriously. "I hope producers will take up this project," he says.
Channel O, which will celebrate its 10 years' anniversary on October 17, started as a 12-hour music lifestyle show on digital satellite television and has since grown into Africa's hottest 24-hour music channel.
The new initiative is part of MNet's plan to allow creative Africans to display their talents. Last week, MNet and the Kenya Film Commission announced that they would sponsor a workshop for 10 Kenyan filmmakers and their Nigerian counterparts in August this year.
The project was launched under the belief that the vibrant Nollywood has lessons to teach Kenyan filmmakers.
The initiative is aimed at helping increase expression through film in Kenya. MNet believes that many more local stories can be made into commercially viable films that the Kenyan viewer can enjoy.
Emphasis will be on enhancing storytelling skills and efficient methods of production.
Victim of Zimbabwe's Economic Crisis: Music
Victim of Zimbabwe's Economic Crisis: Music
The country's most successful singer and guitarist Oliver Mtukudzi is failing to release his new album in the country because his record company cannot raise foreign currency to meet production costs, New Zimbabwe.com can reveal.
Zimbabwe: Music is New Victim of Zimbabwe's Economic Crisis
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New Zimbabwe (London)
26 June 2007
Posted to the web 26 June 2007
Torby Chimhashu
ZIMBABWE'S economic crisis has claimed a new and unlikely victim - music.
The country's most successful singer and guitarist Oliver Mtukudzi is failing to release his new album in the country because his record company cannot raise foreign currency to meet production costs, New Zimbabwe.com can reveal.
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While Tsimba Itsoka, the new album from Mtukudzi, is already available in neighbouring South Africa and the United States where the artist has independent marketing deals, Zimbabweans will have to wait longer.
Mtukudzi's music in Zimbabwe is marketed by the Zimbabwe Music Corporation (ZMC). ZMC, through their parent company, Gramma Records, are battling to source foreign currency to import production material, officials said.
Mtukudzi's album has been ready for release since April this year, he told New Zimbabwe.com. Such is the uncertainty of the situation that the artist fears the album could be available on the UK market when he tours in September before it is available on the Zimbabwe market.
A spokesman for Gramma said: "There are a number of musicians who have had their albums delayed. Gramma, like any other company, is faced with problems of foreign currency.
"Quality packaging and CDs require huge sums of foreign currency. At the moment things are tight, and we cannot compromise the quality of our production."
Mtukudzi said he could not speak on behalf of other musicians, but admitted that having recorded over 50 albums in a career spanning over four decades, he had yet to face a situation as dire as present.
"Tsimba Itsoka is yet to be released here in Zimbabwe, which is hard to accept," said Mtukudzi. "We are doing all we can at Tuku Music to make sure our fans in Zimbabwe get the album.
"We have already released in South Africa and the United States. It will be available in the UK in September when I perform there."
Last year, Mtukudzi's manager Debbie Metcalfe said inflation was eroding the artists' income from CD sales. Musicians, she said, get their royalties from record companies after seven months of the CD being released.
"When the money is finally paid, it would be all worthless because of inflation," she said.
Zimbabwean artists are now having to rely on income generated from performing at live shows.
Zimbabwe is battling inflation of over 4500%, the highest in the world. The country's currency is still officially pegged at Z$250 to one US dollar. Early last week, the informal market price was about Z$100,000 to US$1, but by Monday June 25, it had crashed to Z$400,000 against the US dollar. In January this year US$1 was being traded for Z$3,000.
The Zimbabwe government blames economic sanctions which it claims were imposes by western countries for the country's dramatic economic decline. President Mugabe's local and international critics accuse him of mismanaging the economy and allowing public sector corruption to take
Top 25 Multiplying Churches in America
Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York was ranked the number one multiplying church in America.
Based on a survey sponsored by Leadership Network, Outreach Magazine's 2007 list of "America's Top 25 Multiplying Churches" placed Redeemer on top, Mars Hill Church in Seattle second and NorthWood Church in Keller, Texas, third. All three churches have planted a total of 100 churches since their founding.
Since its founding in 1989, Redeemer has swelled to 4,800 worship attendants each week and apportions 15 percent of its budget to church plants. Its pastor, the Rev. Timothy J. Keller, is sought after by pastors around the world who want to pick up on strategies of creating effective churches in cosmopolitan cities like New York and engaging an urban and diverse culture.
Redeemer's Church Planting Center, established in 2000, has helped start more than 50 churches of various faith traditions and denominations in New York along with 17 Presbyterian churches.
"Among churches today, the conversation – a long overdue one - is moving from church growth to Kingdom growth," wrote Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research, in Outreach Magazine's July/August 2007 issue.
NorthWood's pastor Bob Roberts, author of 2008 release The Multiplying Church, annually trains more than a dozen potential planters and their spouses at the church's own Multiplication Center – a nine-month intensive internship. The church aims for half of the internships to be non-Anglo planters who plan to multiply inside or outside North America to ensure reach into diverse communities worldwide.
"These churches ... are discovering that multiplication is better than addition, and exponential growth is more effective than self-expansion," wrote Stetzer.
Research has found that intentional church planting doesn't automatically prevent a church from experiencing sizable growth, according to Stetzer.
Kensington Community Church in Troy, Mich., which ranked number nine in the top multiplying churches list, has planted 20 churches since 1990 and gives 15 percent of its annual budget to church planting. At the same time, average weekly attendance is at 8,500 - a 52 percent growth over the past five years.
West Ridge Church in Dallas, Ga., (No. 16) experienced a 300 percent increase in attendance over the past five years despite the fact that they have planted seven churches in that same time period.
And churches and denominations are finding that it's almost always better for the health of new church plants to come from involved mother churches rather than from denominational leadership, Stetzer noted.
"Although many of the churches on our list are unapologetically denominational, they consider church planting a local church function and make it a priority," he stated.
Spanish River Church in Boca Raton, Fla., (No. 5) sponsored the start of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (No. 1), Mars Hill Church (No. 2) and CrossPointe Church in Orlando, Fla. (No. 21). It co-founded the non-denominational Acts 29 Network which Mars Hill uses as its primary church-planting ministry, according to Stetzer.
"To keep the ball rolling, we now mandate through our Church Planter’s Covenant that the church planter will build a church that has church planting in its DNA," said Spanish River Pastor David Nicholas.
The top 25 list was compiled by ranking the top 40 respondents using such self-reported criteria as the total number of church plants, the average number of churches planted each year, the percentage of budget dedicated to church planting, and the number of daughter churches that have planted a new church.
Americans' Confidence in the Church Reaching All-Time Low
Americans' confidence in organized religion and other institutions is down across the board compared to last year, a recent Gallup poll found.
Only 46 percent of Americans have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in church/organized religion which is one percentage point of being the lowest in Gallup's history since 1973.
Confidence in the church dropped in the wake of the television evangelism scandals of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It then fell significantly in the wake of revelations surrounding the Catholic priest abuse scandal in 2002.
The Gallup poll found that Protestants are more likely to express confidence in the church compared to Catholics. Confidence in the church or organized religion has dropped from 53 percent in 2004 to 39 percent today among Catholics. Among Protestants, confidence increased from 60 percent in 2004 to 63 percent in 2006 and then dropped to 57 percent today.
Americans express the most confidence in the military with 69 percent saying they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence. Americans are also more likely to have confidence in small business (59 percent) and the police (54 percent) than the church.
The largest drops in confidence between 2006 and 2007 are seen in ratings for banks (41 percent), the presidency (25 percent), television news (23 percent) and newspapers (22 percent). Americans show the least confidence in Congress with only 14 percent – the lowest in Gallup's history – expressing confidence.
"These low ratings reflect the generally sour mood of the public at this time," stated the Gallup report.
Results from the Gallup poll are based on interviews with 1,007 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted June 11-14.
Churches Urged to 'Exorcise' 'Macho' Leadership Model
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Pastors, theologians and lay leaders from 17 countries throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America are convening in Limuru, Kenya, to explore the gap between women and men in leadership.
The Jun. 29-July 4 conference is sponsored by the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) and St. Paul’s United Theological College in Limuru.
“The consultation on gender, power and leadership is timely because it reminds us that while more than half our nations and churches are women and while women contribute immensely to the socioeconomic development of any country, they are still largely decorations and tokens when it comes to leadership,” Esther Mombo, academic dean at St. Paul’s, said in a statement.
Mombo noted that while a number of women in Africa are theologically trained and ordained in some churches since the 1970s, they still remain in the periphery of the church.
“This consultation is a challenge to the Church and to theological institutions that the macho approach should be exorcized from the Church, theology and theological institutions,” Mombo added.
During the consultation, participants will examine power and leadership within local, regional and global geopolitical contexts; analyze and reflect on power and leadership in the church from a theological perspective; challenge patriarchal aspects of ministry and identify negative impacts; envision new models of leadership drawing on feminist theology; and offer alternative models of leadership that address the gender gap in church leadership.
“Current leadership models in church and society are limiting and they erect barriers to fostering justice and peace, sharing resources and building just and humane societies,” contends Patricia Sheerattan-Bisnauth, executive secretary for WARC’s Office for Church Renewal, Justice and Partnership, in a statement.
“Women in ministry seek new models of leadership which are built on the life and ministry of Jesus Christ and his resistance to the ethics of domination and control,” she added.
Sheerattan-Bisnauth acknowledges, however, that some progress has been made to close the gender gap, but observes that many women are still marginalized by poverty, violence and a lack of power to make personal life choices.
"Many churches have failed to address gender, power and leadership in prophetic ways because this is deemed a 'dangerous issue' which can have negative effects on church unity,” Sheerattan-Bisnauth concluded. “Yet avoiding or hesitating to deal with this issue results in the continuous marginalization and dehumanization of women."
The World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) brings together 75 million Reformed Christians in 214 churches in 107 countries with the goal of addressing global problems within church and society. The WARC general secretary is the Rev. Dr. Setri Nyomi of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Ghana.
A Big, Wide World of Music
From left, the dancer Aurelia of Fanfare Ciocarlia; the Congolese singer Ricardo Lemvo; the Brazilian songwriter Carlinhos Brown.
This summer, world music floods into New York City, introducing audiences to music with lower commercial profiles.
Music from all over the world floods into New York City year round, but especially in summertime. That’s when outdoor stages supplement clubs and theaters, and free concert series can introduce audiences to music with lower commercial profiles.
Born to Be Wild (Borat Version) by Fanfare Ciocarlia (mp3)
Hay Un Son by Orishas (mp3)
The Celtic fiddler Kevin Burke.
This summer’s world music concerts include return visits by superstars who will have expatriate fans singing along with hits, like the Brazilian songwriter Carlinhos Brown, who is at the Nokia Theater tonight, and the Mexican rock superstars Café Tacuba, at Central Park SummerStage on July 14. And because it seems that everyone wants to be heard in New York City, this summer also brings a rare event like the July 21 SummerStage concert of music by 12 acts from Sudan, which is now torn by civil war and genocide.
Not so long ago, world music — the usefully vague marketing category, not the music itself — romanced isolation. A new album or a concert promised a rare chance to share what people half a world away were dancingto all night long, or a ceremony formerly closed to outsiders or sounds shaped through generations of a particular family or a village. Of course, the fact that the music had traveled at all was the beginning of the end of that isolation, for both the musicians and their new audiences.
Now there’s a circuit of world music festivals where Irish fiddlers regularly run into Guinean griots and Lebanese oud players. There are world music concert producers who draw connections across national and stylistic boundaries, like the World Music Institute, whose continent-spanning Gypsy Caravan has now been preserved as both CD and documentary. Although world music performers are well aware of the importance of tradition, they aren’t so purist that they’re afraid to experiment. Why not, since their music is already being sampled and mixed by everyone from hip-hop producers to lounge D.J.’s, who care only about the sounds, not the pedigree.
Albums that were once stocked only by the most comprehensive record stores are now much easier to find than the surviving comprehensive record stores themselves, at online sites like calabashmusic.com and emusic.com. Information that used to be tucked into academic enclaves or shared by word of mouth is now easily accessible at sites like worldmusiccentral.org, afropop.org and worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com.
Meanwhile, musicological forays that once meant journeys deep into the outback — where satellite TV and Internet connections are now wreaking cultural changes — have been supplemented lately by visits to the archives of local labels. Hearing world music has always been a kind of vicarious travel, and now it’s more like time travel than ever. What follows is a selection of some of the most notableworld music CDs released over the last year.
‘AUTHENTICITé : THE SYLIPHONE YEARS’ (Stern’s Music)
After Guinea gained independence in 1958, its government supported regional and national big bands to nurture “authenticité”: modern music with traditional roots and politically correct messages. In songs recorded for the Syliphone label from 1965 to 1980, authenticité ended up wildly untraditional, mixing ancient griot songs and local rhythms with Afro-Latin and American borrowings, horn sections, electric guitars and keyboards (complete with distortion), suave vocals and dizzying beats. The 28 songs collected on this double album range from delightful to downright mind-boggling, testimony to how well musicians can subvert specifications.
CARLINHOS BROWN “A Gente Ainda Não Sonhou” (Sony International)
Like other titans of Brazilian pop, the songwriter Carlinhos Brown wants it all: history and sensuality, melody and rhythm, comfort and startling technology. His new album apparently aims for an international market, with two songs in English and a flamenco-pop hybrid for Europe, and it loses its balance. Its best songs, like “Página Futuro,” “Te Amo Familia” and “O Aroma da Vida,” blend kindly melodies with smart constructions of beats and samples. But they’re outnumbered by gooey ballads.
KEVIN BURKE AND CAL SCOTT “Across the Black River” (Loftus)
Born in England to Irish parents and now living in Portland, Ore., Kevin Burke is one of the great living Celtic fiddlers. His first album on his own label is a collaboration with the self-effacing guitarist Cal Scott and various guests that’s cozy and mature, full of modest tributes to fellow fiddlers. It’s all straightforward, songful melody, until Mr. Burke gets to a set of reels that show how many trills, twists and curlicues he can add without losing that singing line.
FANFARE CIOCARLIA “Queens and Kings” (Asphalt Tango)
The Romanian brass band Fanfare Ciocarlia has already proved itself in the breakneck, muscular oompah tunes of its own Gypsy music, which has never been shy about incorporating funk or jazz. “Queens and Kings” goes international, as the band backs up Gypsy singers from around Eastern Europe, including the witchy-voiced Hungarian singer Mitsou and the cutting-voiced Bulgarian singer Jony Iliev, all with raucous good humor. The album’s last oompah extravaganza isn’t Romanian: It’s “Born to Be Wild,” recorded for the soundtrack of “Borat.”
GYPSY CARAVAN: MUSIC IN AND INSPIRED BY THE FILM (World Village)
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The Gypsy Caravan was quixotic musicology: a nationwide tour bringing together musicians spanning the Rom diaspora, from their roots in Rajasthan (the group Maharaja) via Eastern Europe, with Gypsy musicians from Romania (Taraf de Haidouks and Fanfare Ciocarlia) and Macedonia (the singer Esma Redzepova), all the way to flamenco musicians and dancers from Spain (Antonio el Pipa). What they share is a penchant for zigzagging modal tunes, high-speed playing and throat-tearing vocals.
CDs by the singers Nawal (top), from the Comoros Islands, and Lura, from Portugal.
The album is kaleidoscopic, not didactic; it has songs from studio albums, live recordings, backstage bits, even a club remix of Maharaja. While it makes more sense after seeing the documentary, the album is full of adrenaline.
‘THE INSPIRING NEW SOUNDS OF RIO DE JANEIRO’ (Verge)
What unites this collection is the socially conscious messages of the songs, which zero in on urban problems like poverty and crime. The music is a Brazilian miscellany — hip-hop, reggae, pop and funk — and it’s at its best when acts like A Filial or BNegão e os Selectores connect with samba and rural Brazilian roots.
RICARDO LEMVO AND MAKINA LOCA “Isabela” (Mopiato)
Ricardo Lemvo, a singer from Congo, has been pursuing a new generation of connections between Caribbean and Congolese music. (The guitar rumbas of soukous, which spread across Africa, were an earlier Cuban-Congolese fusion.) While Mr. Lemvo sings in a honeyed Congolese croon, the styles on “Isabela” bounce back and forth across the Atlantic in separate songs: Cuban charanga, Angolan kizomba, boogaloo, Congolese soukous. Mr. Lemvo wrote most of the songs — though not the bolero in Turkish — and his fusions are supple, never forced.
LURA “M’bem di Fora” (Times Square)
Lura was born in Portugal but embraced the music of her parents, who are from the Cape Verde islands off the coast of Senegal. The irresistible songs on “M’bem di Fora” (the title means “I’ve come from far away”) envision life on the islands and as a homesick expatriate. They draw on Cape Verdean rhythms, particularly the brisk, six-beat rhythm of the funaná.
Lighter-than-air acoustic guitars, percussion and an occasional accordion carry her through songs that hint at the islands’ problems — the poverty that causes so many Cape Verdeans to emigrate — but dance through them.
NAWAL “Aman” (nawali.com)
Nawal sets her gritty voice to sparse, staccato patterns of upright bass, thumb piano and the banjolike gambusi on “Aman.” She is from the Comoros Islands, which are in the Indian Ocean between Africa and Madagascar, and her music is a personal fusion that draws on the repetitive power of Sufi chants, along with modal acoustic vamps that can sound both African and Arabic. Her songs are lean and incantatory, and they may benefit from a language barrier; every so often she deflates the music with a phrase in English, like “too much pollution.” But more often, she can be hypnotic.
ORISHAS “Antidiótico” (Universal Music Latino)
The politics are complicated, but the music is a pleasure for Orishas, a tuneful hip-hop group of Cuban expatriates who now live in Paris, Milan and Madrid. On this compilation their singing and rapping styles are so diverse that they can sound like a different group on each track. Orishas often draws on old Cuban music — rumbas, sones, boleros — for songs (almost all in Spanish) about cultural pride and the country’s current hard times. Even earnest messages arrive with a grin.
MUSTAFA OZKENT “Genclik Ile Elele” (B-Music)
The song titles are in Turkish, and Mustafa Ozkent has had a long career as a Turkish studio musician. Yet except for an occasional belly-dance-tune phrase on his electric guitar, the campy music on this instrumental album, originally released in 1973, could havebeen a forgotten spy-movie soundtrack. Conga drums, electric organ, scrubbing rhythm guitar, funk bass lines, wah-wah-pedaled leads; who says world music has to be exotic?
POR POR “Honk Horn Music of Ghana” (Smithsonian Folkways)
Old rhythms, new instruments: that’s how truck and taxi drivers in Accra, the capital of Ghana, came up with honk horn music. Using squeeze-bulb horns hooting back and forth in syncopation, and tire rims for percussion, along with drums, bells and voices, the La Drivers Union Por Por Group plays frenetic, clattery, jubilantly kinetic songs, even if most of its performances are at funerals for members of the drivers’ union. The drivers incorporate rhythms from the many ethnic groups along their routes to make true urban village music, and it’s far more danceable than the Cross Bronx Expressway at rush hour.
‘THE IDAN RAICHEL PROJECT’ (Cumbancha)
The Idan Raichel Project was a huge hit in Israel for good reason: it envisions a modern, multicultural nation where voices of young and old, Ethiopian and Yemenite, are all heard in songs devoted to love and tolerance. Idan Raichel is the keyboardist, songwriter and producer behind the scenes, and he’s clearly as familiar with Peter Gabriel as with Middle Eastern traditions. His arrangements bind the voices together in somber minor-mode anthems paced by electronic beats, earnestly seeking to uplift.
‘THE ROUGH GUIDE TO THE MUSIC OF TANZANIA’ (World Music Network)
Tanzanian music encompasses Arab-inflected taarab, lilting electric dance bands, urban hip-hop and traditionalist styles built on local rhythms. This compilation picks superb examples of them all, from the cascading thumb-piano counterpoint of the Master Musicians of Tanzania to Saida Karoli’s delicate pop (rooted in Haya traditions) to the bubbly guitars of the Mlimani Park Orchestra. It’s a tantalizing glimpse from afar.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Please Suggest a Bible Verse for Paris Hilton
Slain teen's eyes give Portsmouth musician the gift of sight
Slain teen's eyes give Portsmouth musician the gift of sight
For the past ten years, 28-year-old Andre Jones has had to play his piano with his face inches from the keyboard.
Doctor's say the Portsmouth musician's cornea thinned, and at 18 he started to lose his vision.
"When I wasn't able to see loved ones, and buried my mother a few years ago and I had to get this close to the casket," recalled Jones.
Ever since, he's fought to find the right match with no luck. But late one Saturday night, something happened.
Two teenagers, Tessa Trachant and Alison Kunhardt were sitting at a traffic light on Virginia Beach Boulevard when they were allegedly hit by a drunk driver, a man in the country illegally.
While the nation fought over how the immigrant was in the country, Jones got a call that he would soon gain sight.
“They said, ‘Andre we got you a great piece of tissue.’"
They told him about a crash, and how the teen behind the wheel had the perfect cornea to give him sight.
He knew Kunhardt's story, and had a feeling that 13News investigators confirmed; he has Ali Kunhardt's cornea, and the surgery was a success.
"They put a chart and I was like, ‘E.’ And they were like, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘What!’"
And while all this was going on in Portsmouth, Ali Kunhardt's father was fighting the pain of losing his baby girl.
“The third week after things died down, that was a rough week for me. I still have trouble working a full day. I still have trouble getting to sleep,” said Dave Kunhardt.
But, for the past 48 hours that hasn't been because of hurt, but excitement as he was eager to meet the man who can see thanks to his daughter
It turns out, Jones and Alison shared a lot.
“This is definitely a bigger match then a cornea; the fact that she played the piano," said Jones.
They listened to the same bands, spent time at the ocean. Even Dave Kunhardt and Jones had similarities. Before long the two men who had never met were finishing each other's sentences.
"There's only so much anyone can do," said Kunhardt.
"And once you slow down, it's right there,” finished Jones.
They promised to stay in touch, work together to raise awareness about drunk driving, immigration, and now, organ donation. And the musician who can finally see without having his nose right up to the keyboard is working on an album to say thanks.
"Aly Kunhardt and Tessa Tranchant will never be forgotten because they saved my life. Though we just met, I miss you, already, and I thank you Alison," sang Jones. "That's the chorus."
And it's one he's proud of, but also very humble about it all.
"I’m happy this shouldn't be a sad story," said Jones. "I hate to put focus on what I’ve been through, but this is the best day of my life."
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| Andre Jones’ surgery restored not only his sight but also his confidence, faith and love of music. He had been nearly blind for almost a decade. MORT FRYMAN/THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT Cornea transplant recipient says 'Thank You Alison' |
By SUSAN E. WHITE , The Virginian-Pilot © May 29, 2007
PORTSMOUTH — As a teenager, Andre Jones often practiced for the moment when he would lose his sight. He’d awaken in the early morning hours and clench his eyes shut, beckoning the darkness to remain. The exercise eased his fears.
Yet preparing to see again after almost 10 years of near blindness terrified him. Jones had suffered from a corneal disorder since his teens.
As he sat in a Granby Street medical office last month, worries washed over him. What if the transplant on his left eye hadn’t worked? What if his eye became infected? What if his body rejected the new tissue?
Dr. Vincent Verdi reassured his patient. The surgery had been successful. His left cornea was healing nicely. If everything progressed as expected, a transplant on Jones’ right eye would be possible by summer’s end, Verdi promised. Then, the test.
| Audio interview: Hear Andre Jones sing an excerpt of "Thank You, Alison," a song he wrote in appreciation for the young woman whose corneas were used to restore his sight.
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Jones stared forward as two fingers were held up about 15 inches from his face.
“How many do you see?” Dr. Verdi asked.
Jones beamed. “Two!”
He wanted to scream. His life had been altered in just over 24 hours. But guilt tempered his jubilation.
In Virginia Beach, two families were still reeling from the sudden loss of their teenage daughters. Alison Kunhardt, 17, was a junior at First Colonial High School. Tessa Tranchant, 16, was a freshman at Kellam High.
The close friends were killed the night of March 30. A drunken driver slammed into the back of their car as it sat at a stoplight on Virginia Beach Boulevard. Alfredo Ramos, an illegal immigrant, was charged with the crime, which attracted nationwide attention.
Jones had heard about the crash but learned more after his surgery. Recuperating at his Portsmouth home, he cried as he and his girlfriend, Chelsea Mills, read a newspaper article that gave details of the wreck. He’d suspected that his transplanted cornea had belonged to one of the teens. Within days, he knew Alison was the donor.
“It worked wonders for my faith,” Jones said. “But at the same time, I kept asking, 'God, why would you allow this?’ I would have gone a little longer for those girls to live.”
 Andre in a uplifting moment working with the choir at Portsmouth’s New Testament Church. |
Jones, 28, doesn’t know the exact time his world faded away or whether anyone was with him when it happened. He doesn’t even think he immediately said anything to his family. At age 18, he’d already become fiercely independent.
He just recalls blurred images of lush green grass in the backyard of his grandmother’s Deep Creek home in Chesapeake.
As a kid, Jones loved running barefoot across the lawn and playing tag and football underneath mammoth oak and pine trees.
He and his adopted mother, Andretta Jones, had moved in when he was 12. His sister, Alyssa, was born soon after.
To create a space of his own, Jones set up a makeshift studio in the barn behind the house where he could practice playing the drums and keyboard for hours.
An aspiring gospel singer and musician, Jones loved performing, especially at Norfolk’s St. Andrews Temple Church of God, where his grandmother, Lauretta Jones, was a bishop and his mother a youth pastor.
Music soothed him, especially when his vision slowly worsened his senior year in high school.
While at Deep Creek High, he said nothing to his teachers or friends about his eyesight and shielded the problem from his family. They were struggling financially and were without insurance.
His mother’s declining health also required more attention. She’d been diagnosed with HIV years earlier. Jones, who already was having trouble in school, dropped out to help care for her.
“I was scared of going blind, but I didn’t want my mother to see me that way,” he said. “I was fine as long as I had my strength.”
Emotionally, Jones was hurting. He was on the verge of manhood but still developing socially. For a young man, blindness was embarrassing.
“It just does something to your self-esteem,” he said. “You’re always afraid that people are watching you.”
He finally sought a diagnosis in the late 1990s. It was keratoconus, a progressive thinning and curvature of the cornea. The disease often affected teenagers and young adults.
Many patients did well with glasses or contact lenses, but Jones was told that he fell into the percentage that would eventually need corneal transplants.
The diagnosis frightened him. His family didn’t have the thousands of dollars needed for the surgery, and Jones was determined not to look for handouts. So, he waited.
“With men, you also have to understand that if something is broken, you find a way to get it fixed on your own,” he said. “With my sight, I just figured I’d find a way to deal with it.”
He dove deeper into his music. He’d always played by ear, but his ability to pick out notes improved as his eyesight worsened. He could learn to play a song in less than 10 minutes.
Jones had been taught to rely on his faith, especially in troubling times.
Five years ago, after learning that a grant from a volunteer service group would pay for his transplant surgery, he sensed God’s plan for him. Then, the grant fell through.
“I had been taught about this invisible God, this can-do-anything God, but after that, I almost questioned his existence,” Jones said. “I was in so much turmoil.”
His mother’s death in 2002 was another setback. The day he buried her, he leaned in close and kissed her on the cheek. It was the only way he could see her to tell her goodbye.
People, objects – everything – had dimmed into silhouettes. Jones did his best to play it off. If he walked into a room full of people, he’d ask a friend to give him a rundown of the guests.
More and more, he was fighting to maintain his independence. At Portsmouth’s New Testament Church, Jones, the music director, struggled during services. He could barely see the organ without pressing his face to it. He considered quitting music altogether.
Mills, Jones’ girlfriend, had always been impressed with his self-sufficiency. But enough was enough. Family members urged him to apply for Medicaid, and Mills encouraged him to havethe corneal transplant.
The day he walked into Portsmouth’s Social Services Department, Jones checked his pride at the door. A social worker who helped fill out the paperwork eased any last-minute fears he had about accepting assistance. Jones said she told him she suffered from the same corneal disorder.
“It had to have been God,” he said.
Weeks after his surgery, Jones took pleasure in the little things, such as reading the back of a CD cover. He also felt as if he were meeting friends and loved ones for the first time. He’d relied so long on memories. Seeing himself again was equally surprising.
“From looking in the mirror, I can tell I had a large imagination,” he said.
His sight was improving daily. As long as he took care of himself, his doctor predicted full recovery and, most likely, 20/20 vision.
Word spread quickly of his surgery, including to the Kunhardt family. Jones and David Kunhardt, Alison’s father, agreed to meet and appeared together on a local TV station. Then “Good Morning America” called. The program is expected to show the interview early next month.
Alison Kunhardt had mentioned her desire to be an organ donor only a month before the crash, her father said. In meeting Jones, Kunhardt said he was comforted by Alison’s donation.
“To see the joy in Andre’s expression, it made me very happy that Alison made a difference,” he said.
For Jones, the teen’s gift has helped restore his confidence and love for music. He’s even written a song, “Thank You, Alison,” to express his gratitude.
In the first verse, Jones sings: “A senseless death claimed the lives of a mother’s princess, a father’s baby girl. Do we blame immigration, blame alcohol, or quietly mourn the jewels we lost?”
He hopes to record the song soon. He’s also planning a benefit to raise awareness of organ donation and the dangers of drunken driving.
In regaining his sight, Jones has rediscovered an appreciation for his faith. At a recent church choir rehearsal, he confidently walked around embracing the singers after an emotional song of prayer.
God’s blessings were at work, he said.
“For so long, I couldn’t look forward to the future because I couldn’t see the present,” he said. “I now know I have a lot to look forward to.”
Learn more
For more about Andre Jones’ benefit, including sponsorships and donations, e-mail Jones at adj42079@yahoo.com.
Jones’ interview with “Good Morning America” is expected to air June 6.
Fortifi@ Humor iPhony.....I Love Paris in the Mourning
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MSNBC Journo Tears Paris to Shreds
Posted Jun 27th 2007 1:58PM by Ben Greenman
Filed under: Media, Celebrity, Paris Hilton So, Mika Brzezinski, on MSNBC, had a histrionic, possibly staged freakout during which she refused to lead with the Paris Hilton story, called her producer out (by name) for scheduling it atop her newscast, and even tried to burn the paper with the Hilton copy. Staged or not, does she have a point?
She's not the first journalist to voice disgust and disappointment with the media's obsession with celebrity (it happened on CNN as well), but the protests ultimately seem ineffective -- the networks keep covering Paris on their newscasts and interview shows, and if it's not Paris, it's dead pregnant women in Ohio, or high school students having sex with their teachers. In fact, on nights when the war is going especially bad, or Rudy Giuliani's South Carolina chairman, state Treasurer Thomas Ravenel, is indicted on federal cocaine charges, Fox News seems to talk only about celebrities, shocking murders, and hot-button social issues, and other networks are equally conflicted about their missions. Tabloid TV is a complicated process: it skirts real stories, which is both a failure of the system and a strategy of it. Video of Brzezinski's Network moment below. | |
Bird Lives in the Adulation of a Young Saxophonist
Bird Lives in the Adulation of a Young Saxophonist
Bird Lives in the Adulation of a Young Saxophonist
Kitra Cahana/ The New York Times
The jazz musician Francisco Calfiso plays the saxophone at Birdland on West 44th Street.
By NATE CHINEN
The Charlie Parker tribute being held this week at Birdland, the club that bears his nickname, isn’t meant for anyone harboring resentment about the commodification of Parker’s art. Nor is it for anyone who insists that jazz belongs strictly to the Americans, or that it glances backward at its own peril. Presented by the Umbria Jazz Festival, with the help of various Italian cultural organizations, the engagement traffics in nostalgia even as it revels in new talent.
Make no mistake, though, the talent in this case is considerable. Filling the Bird role on alto saxophone is the former prodigy Francesco Cafiso, who recently turned 18. Backed by a working quartet and a chamber orchestra, I Solisti di Perugia, he’s revisiting the string arrangements from Parker’s popular recordings of the late 1940s. And he’s managing to make them feel roomy.
Mr. Cafiso favors the tone and articulation of Parker, as well as the dartlike rhythmic cadences. The mark of his hero has been a constant throughout Mr. Cafiso’s 10-year career, so there’s less trepidation in his approach to the role than there might be for other comers. In the first set on Tuesday night his sound was light but assertive, with hints of a fluttering vibrato. When he was relaxing into the beat, rather than urging it forward, the results were winsome.
The 13-piece orchestra played the music with equal flair. Essentially performing without amplification, it sounded rich and resonant in the room. High fidelity may be the real treat of this engagement for anyone who has worn through the grooves of the old LPs. “Just Friends” was newly vivid with its harp glissandi and sighing cello invocation; later there was a brief but effective interlude by an oboist, Simone Frondini.
Of course most tunes were less eventful. Whatever the scope of Parker’s classical ambitions — he was fond of Stravinsky and fascinated by orchestration — his sessions with strings produced a middlebrow music, full of garish sentiment. The arrangements, while charming in measured doses, don’t fare as well in succession. After about a dozen of them you feel as though you’ve consumed a three-course meal of consisting entirely of sponge cake.
Mr. Cafiso seemed aware of this predicament, even if he did open the set with the same four tracks as on “Charlie Parker With Strings: The Master Takes”. So he had his drummer, Stefano Bagnoli, improvise a powerful prologue to “Repetition.” And he counted off one tempo, for “What Is This Thing Called Love?,” at a precariously brisk clip. (Later he offered an alternate take, acknowledging his overcompensation.)
As a coda Mr. Cafiso led his quartet through “Happy Time,” an engaging original with a fidgety approach to rhythm. It gave him a chance to shrug off the burden of emulation, and he took it, still speaking Bird’s language but in his own emerging voice.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Safe Zone
“And He said to them, ‘Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while.’” -- Mark 6:31 (NASB)
One day years ago while I was listening to a book on tape in my car, the cassette’s thin tape caught on a tiny wheel inside the machine and began playing the same few sentences over and over again as it looped around. Try as I might, I couldn’t eject the tape from the player. Neither could I turn the player off, no matter how many times I pushed the “on/off” button. I was trapped inside a car filled with incessant chatter, and I had at least one more hour of driving to go before I reached my destination.
My pulse increased and my concentration decreased as I began to panic, trying in vain to override the tape by switching the player over to the “radio” setting. Finally, in desperation, I turned the volume down to its lowest level. Yet I couldn’t escape the tape’s muffled droning in the background while I drove. A wave of relief washed over me when, at last, I reached a parking lot and was able to shut off the tape by turning off the car.
Do the tapes that play in your life cause you stress sometimes? Maybe it’s the buzz of technology that clamors for your attention every waking moment – your cell phone, e-mail, fax machine, and pager. Perhaps it’s the static of people who place constant demands on you – young children, difficult co-workers, ailing parents, or a friend in a crisis. Do you wish you could turn off your schedule, only to find that it keeps you looping around in a frenzy of activity?
If so, God invites you to come away with Him to secluded place. There, in the embrace of solitude and silence, you can turn off the world’s voices and tune into the voice of the One who made you. You’ll never hear all He’s whispering in your ears until you meet Him in seclusion.
No one who has ever walked the Earth had more important work to do than Jesus. He was confronted with crowds, demands, noise, and interruptions nearly everywhere He went, and He could easily have been constantly busy. Yet He made seclusion a priority: “In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there,” (Mark 1:35, NASB). After He had spent time away in quiet, Jesus returned to His work renewed.
God will recharge your batteries, too, if you make seclusion a daily habit. Here’s how you can do so:
· Give yourself permission to enjoy a daily time of seclusion. Realize that seclusion is a vital habit to have in order to gain the perspective, clarity, and peace God wants for you. Recognize that God designed life’s natural rhythms to include times of aloneness as well as relationships, and times of silence as well as sound. Don’t feel guilty about making time for seclusion. Don’t worry that a habit of seclusion will impair your relationships or make it harder for you to get things done. Trust that, in your time of seclusion, God will strengthen you to deal more effectively with every person and situation in your life.
· Choose a specific time and place for seclusion. Realize that if you don’t schedule a daily appointment for seclusion, the shouts of urgent tasks will overpower the whispers of important ones. Choose a time of day that works best for you, such after you first wake up in the morning, during your midday lunch break, or in the evening before going to bed. Plan to spend a set amount of time – even if only a few minutes – in solitude and silence. Go to a regular place for your solitude: a corner of your bedroom with a cozy chair, your backyard, a break room, or even your car. Whenever you can manage a longer time of seclusion (such as on a weekend or during a vacation), schedule it and go to a special place (such as a park or retreat center) for it.
· Break away from distractions. Don’t compromise your seclusion by carrying your cell phone with you, answering the doorbell if it rings, or sneaking a peek at your “to-do” list or a newspaper. Make a conscious effort to break away from all distractions. Ask God to help you break free of your daily pressures and quiet your spirit.
· Bring vital supplies. Take a copy of the Bible, a notebook, and a pen with you. Have a particular Scripture passage in mind to read and meditate on during your time of seclusion. As you pray about it and other topics, ask God to speak to you, and write down the insights you receive.
· Be honest. If people ask where you’re going when you break away for seclusion, don’t be ashamed to tell them the truth. Simply say you need some time to think and pray about things. They will likely respect your decision.
· Be patient. Expect it to take at least a few moments for echoes of the world’s pressures and noise to stop reverberating in your mind. Relax and sit still. Listen to the silence around you. Anticipate hearing God’s voice speaking to you when the time is right.
· Do it when you need it. Whenever you’re facing a particularly stressful situation and feel the need for some time in seclusion, make time for it however you can. Just excuse yourself and pull away so you can return in greater strength later. Make use of the downtime stuffed into the pockets of your day by turning it into extra seclusion time. For example, while you’re sitting in a line of minivans waiting to pick your kids up from school, turn off the radio and sit alone in silence to clear your mind, then pray.
· Reengage with enthusiasm. After withdrawing for your times of seclusion, be enthusiastic as you reengage with people and activities. Celebrate your newfound peace, strength, and clarity. Thank God for the gifts He has given you during the times you’ve accepted His invitation to “come away” with Him.
At the Bowery Mission, Songs of Faith and Redemption
At the Bowery Mission, Songs of Faith and Redemption
Inside an empty chapel in Lower Manhattan, Dwight Walker stood with his back facing the empty rows of pews. His voice began to rise with songs that included words like faith, found and lost. Five other men joined him.
“The storm is passing over — have faith in the Lord,” Mr. Walker sang in the sanctuary at the Bowery Mission.
The six men are known as Anointed Voices, an a cappella group that sings and preaches in churches, in hospitals, before youth groups and in prisons.
Theirs is a small tale of redemption — of how hard work, willpower and faith can sometimes lead people away from lives of desolation. All were homeless at some point, struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. All forged a new path at the Bowery Mission, a faith-based organization that serves the homeless.
“The message is, no matter where you come from, there is a place God has given you,” said James Macklin, 67, a member of Anointed Voices and director of outreach for the mission. “The only thing one has to do is mine for this goal and make a human being all he can be.”
In 2004, Ien Williams, 46, lost everything to his cocaine addiction: his marriage, his truck-driving business and his home in Queens. He carried his possessions in two suitcases through the streets of Manhattan.
Someone told him about the Bowery Mission, and though he was wary of its emphasis on Christianity, he decided he had nothing to lose by going there. Spending time there helped him beat his addiction, he said, and now Mr. Williams lives at the mission, on the Bowery near Rivington Street, where he is in charge of housekeeping duties. The other singers call him “the minister” because of his preaching.
“For me, it’s a total worship experience,” Mr. Williams said. “I sense the presence of God. This is where I’m safe.”
The life stories of the other singers — Eugene Chisholm, Dennis Ogarra and Carroll Baylor — are strikingly similar to Mr. Williams’s. Three of the six live at the mission, while the others have found their own places.
Mr. Ogarra helped found Anointed Voices in 2006 and recruited Mr. Walker and Mr. Williams. The others joined soon after.
Elvon R. Borst, manager of alumni programs at the mission, was impressed when she heard the group perform recently at a church in the Bronx.
“It seems to me that the men really try to deliver a message of encouragement and hope,” she said.
Mr. Macklin serves as the group’s coordinator, arranging four or five performances a month. Some churches have been particularly welcoming, impressed with their music and their message.
“Everyone,” Mr. Macklin said, “deserves a second chance.”
Two years ago, Mr. Walker, at 39 the youngest of the six members, was using large amounts of crack cocaine. His awakening came, he said, when he was shoved into a van in Manhattan with a bag over his head. The details, he said, are vague because he was high on crack. The next thing he remembers was a bright light shining through the bag into his eyes, he said. It was the police.
Mr. Walker eventually found his way to the Bowery Mission. “This has helped me stay clean, helped me develop a relationship with God,” he said.
Mr. Ogarra, 49, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, joined the Army to escape living on the streets. He was stationed in Kansas at Fort Riley, but before long he was back to his old ways — using crack and cocaine and abusing alcohol.
After he was discharged from the Army he moved back to Brooklyn. “I took the habit with me,” Mr. Ogarra said.
His addictions kept his life in chaos, preventing him from holding a steady job, and leading to the breakup of his marriage. In 2005, he said, he stood on a Long Island Rail Road platform on Atlantic Avenue and thought about killing himself. But something stopped him, he said, and someone who spotted him called the police. An officer suggested he seek help at the Bowery Mission.
“I was just mixed up,” Mr. Ogarra said. “I drank many years away. I did many things. I had no direction, no drive and no hope.”
The mission has kept him free of drugs. and the musical group has given him a more hopeful view of life. He now lives in Washington Heights and has a job with U.S. Security Associates, a nationwide security firm.
“It’s a godsend I got here,” Mr. Ogarra said.“I’ve learned to trust in my faith. If I was to give up I would be lost.”
A tear rolled down Mr. Ogarra’s right cheek as he spoke. But as the six men talked about their lives and prepared for another singing performance, there were plenty of jokes and laughter, too. “We’re kind of like a family,” Mr. Macklin said.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Pianist, Soprano Win Classical 'Idol'
Karen Slack, soprano
January 22, 2006 at 3:00 p.m.
As a winner of Astral Artistic Services’ 2001 National Auditions, soprano Karen Slack joined the Astral roster in April of that year. A Philadelphia native, she received both a Master and Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied voice with Joan Patenaude-Yarnell. A 2004 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions finalist, she was also awarded a prestigious Adler Fellowship by the San Francisco Opera Center as a member of its 2002 Merola Opera Program; the Center recently presented her Schwabacher Debut Recital. Ms. Slack made her San Francisco Opera debut in the role of Henrietta Moore in Virgil Thomson’s The Mother of Us All, and returned to sing both Fauna Bo-Pibulum in Lewis Spratlan’s Earthrise and Irina Arkadina in Thomas Pasatieri’s The Seagull. SFO features her in 2006 in the role of Agnes Sorel in Tchaikovsky’s The Maid of Orleans. Ms. Slack has appeared as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni in Manila, Philippines, a role she has also performed for Curtis Opera Theatre. She recently appeared as Echo in Ariadne auf Naxos with the Opera Company of Philadelphia; also for OCP she has sung Lily in Porgy and Bess, Guadalena in La Périchole, and appeared in its intern casts as the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, and Mimi in La bohème. For Curtis Opera Theatre she has performed the Countess, Tatyana in Eugene Onegin, the Princess in L’Enfant et les sortilèges, and appeared in the title role in its production of L’incoronazione di Poppea. She has also appeared with the Santa Fe Opera. In August 2005 she performs the role of Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello with the Melbourne Symphony.
At the invitation of the San Francisco Symphony, Ms. Slack sang Wynton Marsalis’ All Rise with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. She recently gave concert performances of Weill’s Street Scene and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess with the Phoenix Symphony, gave the west coast première of Earl Kim’s Illumination with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and was presented in recital under Astral’s auspices; Astral recently featured her on its Philadelphia concert series in a performance with Astral graduate bass Eric Owens. She has also appeared as soprano soloist in Brahms’ Requiem with both the Mendelssohn Club and the Lancaster Symphony, as well as in Messiah with the Haddonfield Symphony.
Ms. Slack made her Carnegie Hall debut at Weill Recital Hall in a concert performance of La bohème and has performed in concert in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Prague, and Vienna. She has received numerous prizes, including those from the Leontyne Price Vocal Arts Competition, the Rosa Ponselle International Competition for the Vocal Arts, the National Arts Club Vocal Competition, the Mario Lanza Vocal Competition, the Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation, the Connecticut Opera, and the Marian Anderson Historical Society. Karen Slack is the recipient of both a George London Foundation Award and a Liederkranz Foundation Award.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
The Wanamaker Grand Court Organ the largest operational pipe organ
The Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, the world's largest organ, is being restored in Macy's department store in Philadelphia. There will be a series of performances to mark the restoration.
The Wanamaker Organ was originally built by the Los Angeles Art Organ company, successors to the Murray M. Harris Organ Co., for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. It was designed to be the largest organ in the world, an imitation of a full size orchestra. In addition to a keyboard console, the organ was originally equipped with an automatic player that used punched rolls of paper, according to the Los Angeles Times of 1904.[3] It was designed, at Murray Harris' request, by renowned organ theorist and architect George Ashdown Audsley. It ran into construction delays that led to Harris being thrown out of the project, which was reorganized into the Los Angeles Art Organ company, who finished it at the cost of $105,000, $40,000 over budget. The Fair began (in late April, 1904) before the organ was fully installed in its temporary home, Festival Hall. It still was not finished in September of that year, when Alexandre Guilmant, one of the most famous organists of the day, gave several very well-attended recitals on the organ. Despite this, the organ and the exposition were business disasters for the Art Organ company, which went bankrupt after the Fair closed.
The organ was placed in storage for several years until, in 1909, the organ was bought by John Wanamaker for his new department store at 13th and Market Streets in Center City, Philadelphia. It took thirteen freight cars to move it to its new home, and two years for installation. It was first played on June 6, 1911, at the exact moment when British King George V was crowned. It was also featured later that year when U.S. President William Howard Taft dedicated the store.
Despite its immense size (more than 10,000 pipes), it was judged inadequate to fill the seven-story Grand Court in which it was located, so Wanamaker's opened a private organ factory in the store attic, which was charged with enlarging the organ. The first project to enlarge the organ resulted in 8,000 pipes being added between 1911 and 1917.
Wanamaker's sponsored many historic concerts on the Wanamaker Organ. The first, in 1919, featured Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra with organist Charles M. Courboin.[2] Every sales counter and fixture was removed for the free after-hours event, which attracted an audience of 15,000 from across the United States. Subsequently more of these "Musicians' Assemblies" were held, as were private recitals. For these events Wanamaker's opened a Concert Bureau and brought to America French master organists Marcel Dupré and Louis Vierne, Nadia Boulanger, Marco Enrico Bossi, Alfred Hollins, and several others. During his first recital on the organ, Dupré was so impressed with the instrument that he was inspired to improvise a musical depiction of the life of Jesus Christ. This was later published as his Symphonie-Passion.
In 1924, a new project to enlarge the organ began. Marcel Dupré and Charles Courboin were asked by Rodman Wanamaker, John Wanamaker's son, to "Work together to draw up a plan for the instrument. Use everything you have ever dreamed about." They were told there was no limit to the budget. This project resulted in, among other things, the famous String Division, which occupies the largest organ chamber ever constructed, 67 feet long, 26 feet deep, and 16 feet high. During this project, the organ's current console was constructed, with six manuals and several hundred controls. By 1930, when work on expanding the organ finally stopped, the organ had 28,482 pipes, and, if Rodman Wanamaker had not died in 1928, the organ would probably be even bigger.[4]
Plans were made for, among others, a Stentor division, a large division of high-pressure diapasons and reeds. It was to be installed on the fifth floor, above the String Division, and would be playable from the sixth manual. However, it was never realised, and the sixth manual is now used to play all the floating divisions (Echo, Orchestral, and String), the percussion instruments and the major and minor chimes. Had the Stentor division been installed, the organ probably would have needed a seventh manual. [5]
Following the sale to May in 1995, the Wanamaker's name was removed from the store in favor of Hecht's, but the organ and its concerts were retained. May funded a complete restoration of the organ in 1996, as part of the store's conversion into a Lord & Taylor. Following May's acquisition by Federated Department Stores in 2005, it was announced that the store would be converted into a Macy's, under the management of Federated's Macy's East division, but that the organ and its concerts would remain as a major fixture in the renovated store.