Enjoy Music, Make Friends, Save Cultures, Support Humanitarian Aid All In One Hour
How is that possible? Come to OneWorldWalk this week and find out!
BERKELEY, CA (18 August 2008) - The Downtown Berkeley Association
(DBA), in conjunction with Freight & Salvage, is launching the
first-ever Downtown Berkeley MusicFest on August 21-24, 2008 - that's
this week!! Visitors can check out the entire festival schedule on the
official Downtown Berkeley MusicFest website.
A total of 15 venues throughout the Downtown area will host a variety
of music styles and performers. A featured venue will be a new
cross-cultural community center called OneWorldWalk (OWW), which is the newest project of the global music organization Listen for Life, whose headquarters is in Berkeley. OWW is located at 1942 University Ave. Suite 105, Berkeley, CA 94704.
During the four days of the MusicFest this week, OneWorldWalk will host
nearly 30 concerts, ranging from Native American pow-wow drumming to
Celtic harp, from Chinese ghuzeng music to Tuvan throat singing and
African American folk songs. Two very special concerts are going to be
held as benefit fundraisers to provide understanding of the
countries/cultures that have created this wonderful music.
On Saturday, August 23rd, at 2pm, there will be an a cappella men's
quartet performing music of Georgia, Croatia, Russia and Macedonia,
celebrating their tremendous musical traditions. Given the human
suffering going on at present in Georgia, we will be taking up
donations at the concert, offering the performance of all of this
enriching music as a fundraiser in return for the wealth of culture
that they continue to share with the rest of the world. The singers
will be performing works from both sides of the Russian-Georgian
conflict, because they believe that music is a non-political bridge
that can only help to heal all situations in the hopes for peace.
On Sunday, August 24, at 9pm, the festival performances will conclude
at OWW with a special performance on the Santour by the young,
up-and-coming Persian music master Faraz Minooei from Iran. Faraz's
expressive musicality creates poetry on the santour and this lovely
sound will give the listener a glimpse of the culture and its people,
and will definitely create peace within the walls of OWW, if not on the
planet!
These concerts mentioned above are only two examples of the 28+ events
sharing the music from an equal number of cultures/countries, which are
all performed by outstanding, internationally-renowned artists.
Community members can come to OWW to study any instrument from
virtually any culture, country or tradition. Master musicians from
several of these traditions are organizing to teach their private and
group lessons at the OWW center starting this September – that is in 2
weeks' time! OneWorldWalk also offers rehearsal space, art exhibit
space, cross-cultural diversity training, conflict resolution and gang
prevention workshops using music, language classes, and concerts on
weekends (year round) featuring world music, classical music, and many
other genres.
We at Listen for Life, a global non-profit
music organization, are launching an exciting project addressed at the
current situation in Kenya. We are calling all musicians and producers
worldwide to join Listen for Life’s mission to use music as a channel for
communication, and in this case, to make an immediate impact not only in
the preservation of music and culture but of actual human life.
Friday, April 25, 2008
8 pm
Cost: $20 (Seats are limited)
OneWorldWalk Center
1942 University Ave., Suite 105
Berkeley, CA
Please click on the Contact Us page for a map and directions to the venue.
Program Notes
Diana Rowan (harp) and Lily Storm (voice & harmonium) present rare
lullabies from around the world (Malta, Lithuania, Isle of Man, to name
a few) arranged in artful and surprising ways. Lily's studies with the
greatest living masters of Balkan, Eastern European and Middle Eastern
music, coupled with extensive fieldwork, combine with Diana's
background in Western classical, Balkan, and Sephardic music to create
a multi-layered, magical experience. Lullabies are a fascinating
vehicle for the musician; being so compact, they allow great scope of
interpretation while also containing a tremendous amount of musical and
historical DNA.
Lullabies and dirges often share melodic and even textual content, and
are regarded as the most conservative genres within a tradition,
preserving scales, styles and images long after other genres have
adopted newer fashions. Lily and Diana have enjoyed the challenge of
finding and arranging these lullabies in ways that bring out the
distinct character of each one, while preserving their archaic
simplicity. The words, sometimes poetic, sometimes mundane and prosaic,
never fail to give a picture of the undying love between generations,
as well as the frustrations of a sleep-deprived parent!
We hope they prove relevant to people of all ages, by offering soothing comfort to any in need.
Artist(s) Biography
Harpist Diana Rowan's playing has been described as having "unusual
power and beauty." Born in Ireland, she lived on the East Coast, in
Europe and the Middle East before settling in Berkeley, California.
Diana's classical training (MM Piano Performance, under Tchaikovsky
Piano Competition prize-winner Roy Bogas, intensive ongoing studies
with Alice Giles, 1st prize-winner of the Israel International Harp
Contest) intersects with her love for Balkan, Eastern European,
Sephardic and Middle Eastern music to create compelling solo and
ensemble performances. Currently collaborating with her mentor and
Kitka founder Bon Singer's vocal ensemble Ya Elah, vocal virtuosa Lily Storm, Hindustani bansuri master Deepak Ram, and rising early music stars San Francisco Renaissance Voices,
Diana can also be heard on several CDs including her debut solo album
Panta Rhei. Diana's second album, The Bright Knowledge, will be
released 2008. This fall she will be performing at the Bay Area's
beloved Festival of Harps, as well as the Australian Harp Festival.
Lily Storm is a singer specializing in traditional music, with
particular experience in Eastern European styles. She has studied with
many traditional singers, and has traveled extensively, living for some
months in Hungary and Greece and visiting Russia, Georgia, Turkey,
Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Montenegro, Croatia and India. She also
makes use of archival recordings to study ancient styles preserved into
the early 20th century. Lily performs with several ensembles in the Bay
Area, working with musicians including Ryan Francesconi, Dan Cantrell,
Aya Davidson, Beth Bahia Cohen, Eric Perney, Peter Maund, Shea Comfort,
Leslie Bonnett, Dan Ziagos, Bill Lanphier, Bryan Bowman, and Lucia
Comnes. She also performs early music with Shira Kammen, Tim Rayborn,
and Kit Higginson; Scandinavian folk music with the Swedish duo DrŒm,
and she has collaborated with Kane Mathis, an accomplished kora and oud
player. Highlights of the last year include singing with the Toids to
open for Joanna Newsom, and performing in Greece with Lucia Comnes at
the Voices of Stone Festival, sharing the stage with Petro-Loukas
Halkias and Domna Samiou, among others. Previously she sang with the
Bay Area vocal ensemble Kitka for 5 years. As part of Kitka, she
recorded as a soloist (The Vine, Wintersongs), collaborated in concert
with ensembles including Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, Ziyia, Ensemble
Alcatraz, Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir, Davka, and
Mariana Sadovska, and appeared on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home
Companion and NPR's Performance Today.
Friday, April 18, 2008
8 pm
Cost: $10 General/$5 Student (Seats are limited)
OneWorldWalk Center
1942 University Ave., Suite 105
Berkeley, CA
Please click on the Contact Us page for a map and directions to the venue.
The Cal Jazz Choir is a 12-member ensemble dedicated to exploring
the colorings of vocal jazz. Under the direction of William Garcia
Ganz, CJC draws its repertoire from the traditional standards of jazz
greats such as Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Cole Porter, and Joe
Garland, as well as from popular jazz groups like The Real Group, Take
6, Singers Unlimited, and The Manhattan Transfer. The short concert at
OneWorldWalk will feature an all-a cappella repertoire as a preview to
the group's spring show on May 10th!
Faik
Chelebi is a gifted pupil of a famous Azeri musician Bahram Mansurov
(1911-1985), one of the most distinguished tar performers and teachers
of the last hundred years. As a tar-player, Chelebi has performed in
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Estonia, Lithuania, and has been
invited to perform in the U.S. by Indiana University, City University
of New York (CUNY), CREEES at Stanford University, and the Silk Road
House in Berkeley. His visit is sponsored by the Silk Road Foundation.
Faik Ibragim ogly Chelebi, originally from Sheki, Azerbaijan (of the
south-east Caucasus), is a well-known folklorist virtuoso tar player.
Chelebi holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology and dedicated his 1999
dissertation to the Azeri instrumental genre reng. Chelebi authors many
scholarly articles in Russian and Azeri languages, and is the current
Professor of Music at the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia
as well as a research fellow at the Russian Institute for History of
the Arts, both located in St. Petersburg.
At the same time, Chelebi has a long and very successful history of
solo performance on the 11-string tar - different from the original
Iranian 5-string tar. His repertoire consists of instrumental mughams;
the Azeri mugham being a highly original Azerbaijani version of the
well-known Iranian classical cycle dastg?h. This Islamic art music,
based on modal principle, is emotionally deep and beautiful, and at the
same time represents an amazing typological parallel to the European
baroque music.
Faik Chelebi represents the unique solo “poem” version of traditional
mugham suite usually performed by a singer and accompanied by an
instrumental ensemble. However, the mughams, tantamount to classical
tradition, can be performed on the tar alone when the musician is a
deep connoisseur of the genre and a great virtuoso and improviser.
During his presentation, Dr. Faik Chelebi will offer an improvisational
set of various mughams. Dr. Izaly Zemtsovsky, visiting professor in
music at Stanford University, will be introducing and commenting his
performance.
OneWorldWalk Grand Opening!
Welcome to the new OneWorldWalk center! Your new cross-cultural community center in Downtown Berkeley!
Internationally renowned musician Donna Stoering founded the global non-profit Listen for Life in London ten years ago this month. LFL
now has affiliate production studios, outreach projects, and/or
volunteers in over 45 countries, and its projects or broadcast
productions have together thus far impacted the lives of over 9 million
people worldwide.
With Executive Director Andy Anderson coming on board in 2003, LFL moved the global headquarters to Berkeley California a few years ago and are celebrating LFL's ten-year anniversary with the launch of a new project: the creation of cross-cultural "global-community" centers (called OneWorldWalk)
that promote the use of music as a unifying force amongst all
peoples/cultures within each community, particularly those who are
recent immigrants searching for a way to maintain/share their unique
music traditions.
The "OneWorldWalk center opening this month in Berkeley's Arts District will
be the model for many such centers being opened throughout the world
with the help of micro-finance organizations and individual/corporate
donations in each locale. The OWW Berkeley center
now offers a gathering space for all peoples to exchange and share
cultures, music performances, affordable music lessons on traditional
instruments, cross-cultural jam sessions, weekend workshops (i.e.
medieval singing, early-music instruments, choral group rehearsal, drum
sessions), art studios and exhibition space, and
production/post-production activities creating music-related
programming for radio, television, and all new digital media formats.
We welcome your visit, your teaching/performance, or your participation as a donor or volunteer!
Venue Space for Cultural Music!
Perform in your new cross-cultural community center in Downtown Berkeley!
OneWorldWalk is offering its venue space for musical
groups interested in performance space, music lessons, conferences,
etc. Rental fees are reasonable, but space is limited.
Please click here to visit the Listen for Life site. 
