#2019 Austin Area Jazz Festival

[redcarpetview]

5th Annual Austin Area Jazz Festival

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   Start your Holiday Season at the Austin Area Jazz Festival a celebration of Music, Art and Culture.

    Stay connected for the deals and details of this years festival activities and music lineup.

[writemarcus]

Charles Turner, Marcus Scott & Sean Mason in MELANIN or THE IN CROWD July 31, 2021 at Catskill’s Bridge Street Theatre

A Brand-New Musical in Concert at Catskill’s Bridge Street Theatre

Wrapping up a recent Artists’ Residency at the Catwalk Institute with pianist/composer Sean Mason and playwright Marcus Scott, Brooklyn-based vocalist and composer Charles Turner will present a one-night only “tasting” from the project they’ve all been creating together. This will be the very first airing of selections/songs from “Melanin or The In-Crowd”, an exciting new musical theatre piece in its nascent stages, to be performed live at Catskill’s Bridge Street Theatre on Saturday evening July 31 at 8:00pm.

Over the course of a weekend, a cadre of young, upscale, globetrotting professionals gather for one last hurrah in and around NYC’s lounge scene. Celebrating the newfound success of one of their own who has received a lucrative job offer overseas, the coterie spends an unforgettable weekend, touring various nightclubs in an endless cavalcade of booze, hookups and cheap thrills.

Inspired by the classic golden age MGM Hollywood musicals, but filtered through a modern lens, this splashy new musical encompasses a variety of musical styles such as blues, jazz, swing, big band, jazz fusion, progressive soul, psychedelic soul, cinematic soul, Sophisti-pop, quiet storm, urban, doo-wop, hip-hop soul, neo-soul, alternative R&B, funk, dancehall, reggae, highlife and afro pop. “Melanin or The In-Crowd” is a postmodern coming of age rom-com that explores themes including millennials and the youth of America, materialism, consumerism, capitalism and commodification, classism, colorism, selfishness, respectability politics, depersonalization and dating in the digital age, sexism, sexual freedom, and modern love, all through the prism of black bourgeois culture.

The multi-faceted Turner has performed at such venues as Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Birdland, Smoke Jazz club and the historic Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem. International performances include PizzaExpress in London, Sunset/Sunside in Paris, Sala Clamores in Madrid, and other venues abroad from Seoul, South Korea to Wellington, New Zealand. His passion is to bring swing and jazz to listeners of all generations, carrying the Spirit of Harlem and the torch of the past into the present day for music lovers and dancers throughout the world to experience, embrace, and enjoy. This new collaboration with pianist/composer Sean Mason and playwright Marcus Scott extends Turner’s range even further and promises to be an event to remember.

Charles Turner is a multi-faceted, Brooklyn-based composer and vocalist whose work transcends borders and styles from Jazz, R&B to Soul. Turner has held residencies, hosted, and performed at venues such as Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center,   Birdland, Smoke Jazz club and  the historic Minton’s Playhouse  in Harlem. International  performances include, Pizza Express, in London, Sunside Sunset in Paris, Sala Claomores in Madrid, and more venues abroad from Seoul, South Korea to Wellington New Zealand.

Turner’s Sophomore Album “ Single & In Love” , produced by Grammy award winning drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. has received critical acclaim and continues to  play all across the world. Berklee College of Music Graduate, he has extended his educational value by teaching at The American School of Modern Music in Paris, France in 2017 & 18.  Then then participated in “ Jazz for Young People” at JALC and conducted Masterclasses in various high schools and  Universities such as N.Y.U.

Charles’ passion to bring swing and jazz to listeners of all generations and backgrounds proceeds through his new band and project Charles Turner & Uptown Swing.  Bringing the Swing and Spirit of Harlem to music lovers and dancers around the world. Vibrant Swing , Virtuosic Bebop & Vital Blues, The band extends music from the swing era to present under the umbrella of swing .

Vocalist, Composer, & Educator, moving forward to bring this incredible music to the people ; Turner holds the torch  of the past  and brings it along with him to present day for all to experience , embrace, and enjoy.

MARCUS SCOTT is a playwright, musical theater writer, librettist, journalist, critic and teaching artist. Full-length works include “Fidelio” (Libretto; Heartbeat Opera at Baruch Performing Arts Center, 2018; called “poignant” by NY Times and “vital” by The New Yorker), “Tumbleweed” (Finalist for the 2017/2018 Humanitas Play LA Workshop, the Playwrights Foundation’s 2017 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and the 2017 Festival of New American Plays at Austin Playhouse; semi-finalist for the 2017/2018 New Dramatists Princess Grace Fellowship Award), “Sibling Rivalries” (long-listed for the 2020 Theatre503 International Playwriting Award; semifinalist for 2021 Blue Ink Playwriting Award, the Landing Theatre Company’s 2020 New American Voices Playwriting Festival and the 2020 Campfire Theatre Festival), and “Cherry Bomb” (recipient of the 2017 Drama League First Stage Artist-In-Residence; 2017 Finalist for the Yale Institute for Music Theatre). His work has been developed, presented and/or produced by Joe’s Pub, Feinstein’s/54 Below, Abingdon Theatre Company, Astoria Performing Arts Center, Out of the Box Theatrics, Weathervane Theatre, Dixon Place, National Black Theatre (KSA series), Playwright’s Playground at Classical Theatre of Harlem, Space on Ryder Farm, Cherry Lane Theater (DUAF), Theater 80 St. Marks (DUAF), Across A Crowded Room – Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library (NYPL), NY Theatre Barn, CoLAB Arts, Symphony Space, NYC LGBT Center, Secret Theatre, MicroTheater Miami, among others. Residencies and retreats: The Center at West Park Virtual Performance Residency (2020-2021), Gingold Theatre Group Speaker’s Corner Writer (2020-2021), Liberation Theatre Company’s Playwriting Residency Fellowship (2018), Athena Theatre’s Athena Writes Playwriting Fellowship (2018), the inaugural LIT Council at the Tank (2018-2019), Fresh Ground Pepper Artist-In-Residence BRB Retreat (2017), One Co. Writers’ Residency at Little Farm (2017) and Goodspeed Opera House Retreat (2013). He was also the 2016-17 Musical Theatre Fellow at Playwrights Horizons and the 20172018 co-moderator of Musical Theatre Factory’s POC Roundtable. Scott is a four-time top finalist for the R&D Group at The Civilians, a two-time National Black Theatre I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency finalist and a 2019 finalist for the Bushwick Starr’s Starr Reading Series. His articles appeared in TimeOut New York, American Theatre Magazine, Playbill, Elle, Out, Essence, among others. BFA: State University College at Buffalo, MFA: NYU Tisch.

SEAN MASON. Born and raised in Charlotte, NC, Sean Mason taught himself by ear how to play the piano at the age of 13. His beginning musical roots included Gospel, Classical, Hip-Hop, and R&B music but then he discovered jazz and decided to make a career of it. To further his knowledge, Sean went to study music at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. After two years of study, Sean decided to move to New York City and transfer his studies to The Juilliard School, studying for another two years before ultimately leaving to pursue his music interests independently. In his short but already groundbreaking career, Sean has played and toured with many jazz professionals, prominently including Branford Marsalis and Wynton Marsalis, but among many others. Sean is based in New York City and leads his own band, “The Sean Mason Trio”, which performs regularly in New York City and tours across the globe. Aside from his performing career, Sean is also a composer and an orchestrator in the musical theatre space. https://www.seanmasonofficial.com

[atxdigitalphotography]

Austin Area Jazz Festival 2019 By Michael Lewis | ATX Digital Media | Austin, Texas The 2019 Austin Area Jazz Festival (AAJF) had an intimate evening of great jazz entertainment featuring Grammy Award winner and Jazz Saxophonist Kirk Whalum, Jazz/Funk Trumpeter Tom Browne and Jazz Saxophonist Mike Hamilton on Friday, November 29, at the Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex. Whalum said he was excited to be back in Austin. Brown had the audience dancing in the aisles when he performed his popular hit, “Funkin for Jamaica.” Brown and Hamilton performed together on stage. If you missed this year’s AAJF, be sure to stay tuned for next year. © 2019 Michael Lewis Global Photography, All Rights Reserved Austin Area Jazz Festival (at Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6FkASil8SE/?igshid=11aawlhhasflg

[brajeshupadhyay]

The novel coronavirus continues to spread in the U.S. Cities and states are restricting large gatherings of people, and even presidential hopefuls are canceling rallies. Here is a list of events and destinations that have been affected by the outbreak. City and State restrictions Massachusetts On Sunday, Governor Charlie Baker has banned gatherings of 25 people or more. Restaurants are to be take-out only through April 17. New York, Connecticut and New Jersey Governors Cuomo (NY), Lamont (CT) and Murphy (NJ) announced their respective states will be shutting down all movie theaters, gyms and casinos temporarily. All restaurants and bars are restricted to take-out only. Sporting Events and Leagues NBA The NBA has abruptly suspended its season “until further notice.” The decision came after a Utah Jazz player tested positive for COVID-19 ahead of Utah’s game against the Oklahoma City Thunder. That game was immediately canceled. At the time the NBA decided to suspend the season, a plan was not yet in place for when the league would resume. PGA Golf  The PGA Tour canceled the Players Championship after the first round and all tournaments until the Masters. The Masters Tournament has been postponed, the chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club announced on Friday. Fred Ridley, Chairman of Augusta National Golf Club, said the Masters will  now take place “at some later date.” NHL  The NHL announced it is pausing the 2019-20 season, effective immediately. Commissioner Gary Bettman said the league will try to resume games “as soon as it is appropriate and prudent,” and is hopeful the stoppage will not affect the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Major League Baseball Major League Baseball delayed the start of its regular season until May at the earliest. The league said in a statement on March 16 the move was made in accordance with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention against gatherings of 50 people or more for eight weeks. Major League Soccer The MLS season has been put on hold. Only two games into the season, the league announced it is suspending play for 30 days.  U.S. Soccer The United States Soccer Federation announced it would cancel upcoming men’s and women’s national team matches in March and April. The statement said the majority of the Youth National Team and Extended National Team camps that were planned through the end of April would also be canceled.  NCAA Basketball Tournament The NCAA has canceled the 2020 Division I men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.  XFL football The XFL has suspended play, effective immediately. Prior to the announcement, the new football league said the March 15 game between the Los Angeles Wildcats and the Seattle Dragons would take place without fans.  Tennis: ATP and WTA tours Thursday, the Association of Tennis Professionals and the Women’s Tennis Association, the governing bodies for both men’s and women’s professional tennis respectively, announced they are both suspending ongoing tennis tours due to health concerns over COVID-19. The ATP has declared a six-week suspension of play, meaning no tournaments will be held up to the week of April 20. International Soccer England: Premier League The English Premier League has postponed its season until at least April 4. The decision was reached after the league called an emergency meeting. The league had previously postponed the Manchester City vs. Arsenal match after Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta tested positive for coronavirus.  Several Premier League players have also tested positive for the virus. USMNT midfielder Christian Pulisic and his Chelsea teammates are in self-quarantine after a teammate tested positive. Several players from Leicester City and Manchester City have also tested positive. CBS Sports reports there is a possibility that the Premier League 2019-20 season may not be completed. Greg Clarke, chairman of the Football Association which regulates the sport in England reportedly said he does not think it’s “feasible” the season will be completed.  Spain: La Liga In Spain, all La Liga soccer matches have been suspended for the next two matchdays.  Italy: Seria A Italy’s top soccer league Serie A played several matches “behind closed doors” in empty stadiums. But the country has now suspended all sporting events until April 3 at the earliest.  A defender for top club Juventus has tested positive for the virus. France: Ligue 1, Ligue 2 France’s Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 have suspended all matches until further notice. Prior to Friday morning’s announcement, the top French soccer leagues had been playing all matches in empty stadiums, a plan they had intended to see through April 15.  Germany: Bundesliga Germany’s Bundesliga teams will also play their matches in empty stadiums this weekend. No plans have been announced to suspend play at this time. Bundesliga club Paderborn announced that coach Steffen Baumgart is being tested for the virus and second division club Hannover 96 has two players in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19. UEFA Champions League and Europa League UEFA, the European governing body for soccer, postponed of Europe’s two largest soccer tournaments. Both the Champions League and Europa League competitions are being postponed due to the spread of the coronavirus.  The Champions League round of 16 was set to finish next week and quarterfinals slated to begin on April 7. After the announcement, it is now unclear when play will resume. Auto Racing The opening race of the Formula 1 racing season has been canceled. The Australian Grand Prix has also been canceled, race organizers announced.  The NHRA announced Gatornationals, the annual drag racing event, was also canceled. The news comes after a member of the McLaren Racing Team tested positive for COVID-19, the statement said.  NASCAR announced they would postpone race events at Atlanta Motor Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway over the next two weeks. NASCAR had originally announced it would race without fans in attendance and only drivers, crews and other necessary personnel, but have now reversed that decision. Music Festivals Coachella and Stagecoach Organizers of the annual music festival have pushed it back by six months at the direction of health authorities. Goldenvoice announced the rescheduling of the 2020 music festival. Coachella will now take place over two weekends in October: October 9 to 11 and October 16 to 18. Stagecoach, which highlights country music, will take place on October 23 to 25. Following the announcement, headliners Dan + Shay took to Twitter to announce that they would not be able to make the rescheduled dates due to their planned tour.  Coachella draws up to a quarter-million people to Indio, California, every year. This year’s lineup is set to include Frank Ocean, Rage Against the Machine, Travis Scott, Lana Del Rey and Thom Yorke. South by Southwest Austin mayor Steve Adler canceled South by Southwest, the preeminent film, music and media conference that was set to begin in one week. The move comes after weeks of public pressure, during which the conference lost major attendees including Facebook, Twitter, Intel, Mashable, Netflix, Amazon and TikTok. More than 50,000 people had petitioned for the event to be called off. “There was no acceptable path forward that would mitigate the risk to our community,” said Dr. Mark Escott, Austin’s interim health authority. He noted that the number of visitors attending SXSW and their many geographic origins would have created a crisis situation. No cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Travis County, which houses Austin, Escott said. There are at least six cases in the Houston area, the Associated Press reports. Ultra Music Festival Miami’s Ultra Music Festival, which was scheduled to take place March 20 to 22, has been called off until next year, the Miami Herald reported. Tin Pan South Songwriting Festival The annual songwriting festival featuring both amateur and professional composers has been canceled. Tin Pan South Songwriting Festival organizers cited both the recent deadly tornado as well as coronavirus concerns.  Met Gala 2020 Postponed This year’s Met Gala has been officially postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the event’s co-chair Anna Wintour confirmed on Monday. Movies and Theater Broadway shows canceled Broadway is going dark due to coronavirus concerns as New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced gatherings with 500 people or more are no longer permitted in the Empire State. While the New York ban was set to go into effect Friday at 5 p.m., the Broadway shows shutdown began at 5 p.m. Thursday and will run through April 12. Tribeca Film Festival postponed In a statement Thursday, Tribeca Film Festival announced postponement based on Governor Cuomo’s announcement. The festival was supposed to take place April 15 – 26, co-founder Jane Rosenthal said on the festival group’s website. CinemaCon The National Association of Theatre Owners canceled CinemaCon 2020, originally scheduled for March 30 – April 2 in Las Vegas, the organizers said in a statement posted. The convention features distributors and exhibitors presenting upcoming films as a preview for the summer movie season. Movie releases delayed Sony, Paramount, STX, Disney, and Universal have all delayed the release of several feature films. Some of the movies include F9, No Time to Die, Lovebirds, Mulan, The New Mutants, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, A Quiet Place Part II, and Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway. Concert Tours Pearl Jam Individual musicians are also calling off their tours. Pearl Jam has pushed back the North American leg of its tour, which was scheduled to start March 13 in Toronto. (Shows in Germany are still scheduled to proceed, starting June 23.)  Avril Lavigne Pop singer Avril Lavigne has canceled multiple tour dates throughout Europe in March and April. She took to Twitter to tell her fans “You’re in my thoughts and prayers and we are hoping to announce rescheduled shows soon.”  Green Day American pop-punk band Green Day postponed their “Hella Mega” tour dates in Asia “due to the health + travel concerns with coronavirus,” the group said on Twitter. “We know it sucks, as we were looking forward to seeing you all, but hold on to your tickets we’ll be announcing the new dates very soon.” Blake Shelton The country singer’s “Friends and Heroes” tour dates from March 12 to March 21 have been postponed and will be rescheduled. K-Pop: BTS, Taeyeon and NCT K-pop group BTS, one of the most popular boy bands in the world, canceled April tour dates in Seoul citing concerns about the coronavirus. Instead of starting its world tour in Seoul, the band will hold its first show in Santa Clara, California, later in April. Fellow singers Taeyeon and NCT also dropped planned shows for Singapore. Public Events Boston Marathon postponed The Boston Marathon, scheduled for April 20, was also postponed.  The marathon has been rescheduled for September 14. White House Easter Egg Roll The White House has called off this year’s Easter Egg Roll as public health officials across the country implement new measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus. The annual event, which takes place on the South Lawn, was scheduled to take place April 13, but was canceled “out of an abundance of caution,” the White House said. Vacation Destinations Disney resorts in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo The Tokyo Disney resort said this week it would close until March 15 due to the coronavirus outbreak. Disney theme parks in Shanghai have been closed since January 24 and Hong Kong Disney attractions since January 25. Disneyland – Anaheim, California Disneyland was granted an exception from the state of California advisory to postpone or cancel all gatherings of 250 people or more. After initially deciding to stay open, Disneyland announced it would shut down for the remainder of March. This is only the fourth time in history the California park has closed.  Officials said that Disney’s three hotels at Disneyland — the Disneyland Hotel, Paradise Pier and the Grand Californian — will remain open until Monday, March 16 to give current guests enough time to make travel arrangements. Disney World – Orlando, Florida A few hours after announcing Disneyland’s closing, Disney announced that the theme parks at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, and the Disneyland Paris Resort will close starting at the close of business on March 15. Disney Cruise Line will suspend all new departures beginning March 14.  On its website, Disney World says those with tickets for days the park is closed will be extended to use any date through December 15, 2020, and annual passes will be extended by the number of days the parks are closed, March 16, 2020, through March 31, 2020. Universal Studios – Orlando and Hollywood CBS Miami reports that Universal Orlando will be closing its two parks and water park. The closures will last until the end of March. However, the company said Universal’s hotels and CityWalk will remain open. Universal Studios Hollywood also announced they would be closed to the public, according to CBS Los Angeles. SeaWorld closing SeaWorld announced they are temporarily closing all our theme parks through the end of March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Technology conferences E3 2020 E3, the world’s biggest gaming convention, has been called off, CNET reported. The Entertainment Software Association, which organizes the annual event, said E3 will return in 2021, according to GameSpot. The convention is a spotlight for major game companies to showcase their new products for the year. Last year, 66,000 people attended. Microsoft and Ubisoft will showcase their games online instead. “After careful consultation with our member companies regarding the health and safety of everyone in our industry — our fans, our employees, our exhibitors and our longtime E3 partners — we have made the difficult decision to cancel E3 2020, scheduled for June 9 to 11 in Los Angeles,” the Entertainment Software Association said in a statement.  Facebook Global Marketing Summit and F8 conference Facebook canceled its annual marketing summit scheduled for early March, which was expected to draw 4,000 people. Additionally, their annual F8 developers conference – scheduled for May 5 and 6 – has also been canceled. Facebook called off the “in-person component” of its F8 developer conference, the company’s biggest annual event, which typically brings thousands of software engineers to Silicon Valley. Facebook said it would replace the event with “locally hosted events, videos and live-streamed content.”  Google I/O and Cloud Next conferences Google announced that it has canceled its annual developers conference scheduled for May 12 to 14. The announcement came after the search giant had announced the cancellation of both its annual Cloud Next conference and Google News Initiative Summit, opting for a virtual cloud conference instead. Google News Initiative Google called off its annual news conference, which would have brought together several hundred media-industry attendees in Sunnyvale, California, in late April. “We regret that we have to cancel our global Google News Initiative summit but the health and wellbeing of our guests is our number one priority,” Richard Gingras, vice president of news, said in a statement. Mobile World Congress The MWC, the world’s largest technology trade show, typically attracts some 100,000 people from around the world to Barcelona every February. But the conference organizers called off this year’s event after high-profile attendees including Facebook and LG pulled out. “The global concern regarding the coronavirus outbreak, travel concern and other circumstances make it impossible for the GSMA to hold the event,” the organization said in a statement on February 12. The show has been an annual event since 2006. Games Developer Conference After Gearbox, Blizzard Entertainment, and other big developers announced they would not attend Games Developer Conference in March, the conference was postponed. Organizers say that GDC will still happen in summer 2020, but it is unclear whether the developers that have dropped out will still attend at a later time this year.  Other conferences and conventions Adobe Summit Adobe canceled the in-person version of its eponymous Summit, scheduled for March 29 to April 2 in Las Vegas, the AP reported. More than 20,000 people were expected to attend the conference, which will be held as an “online experience” this year, according to the AP. Cold Spring Harbor Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has called off all conferences and meetings set to take place on its campus on New York’s Long Island for the coming month. “CSHL has canceled or postponed all upcoming scientific conferences and courses bringing participants to campus through April 5th, and will reevaluate future offerings on a rolling basis,” the lab said in a statement. The move affects at least four courses set to take place in that time period. Real estate conferences The National Association of Realtors canceled two West Coast conferences this week: the Joint AE Institute, which was to take place March 13 to 16 in San Diego, and the Realtor Broker Summit, scheduled for March 31 to April 1 in Los Angeles. The group said it is “considering alternatives” and could reschedule, relocate or redesign both conferences later in the year.  WonderCon 2020 Comic-Con International’s upcoming WonderCon convention, originally scheduled for April 1 through April 12, has been postponed until a later date. In a statement, organizers cited a California Department of Public Health recommendation that gatherings and events of more than 250 people should either be postponed or canceled.  The fate of San Diego Comic-Con, the largest comic book convention, has not yet been decided. It is currently scheduled to take place July 23 to 26.  World Bank, International Monetary Fund  The 189-nation International Monetary Fund and its sister lending organization, the World Bank, announced that they will replace their regular spring meetings in Washington with a “virtual format,” the Associated Press reported. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and World Bank President David Malpass issued a joint statement saying their decision was driven by “growing health concerns related to the virus.” Separately, the World Bank has said it would make up to $12 billion available globally to boost countries’ response to the coronavirus, the Financial Times reported. The two global lending organizations typically hold a spring meeting in Washington, where they both have their headquarters. This year’s meeting had been scheduled for the week of April 13. Houston energy conference CERAWeek 2020 A major energy conference in Houston has been called off. IHS Markit has canceled CERAWeek 2020, an annual energy conference that was set to attract delegates from more than 80 countries to Houston starting March 9. “We do this with deep disappointment,” the organizers said in a statement, adding that their top priority was the health and safety of conference participants. “We have spent the last several weeks focused on this question, established a medical partnership with Houston Methodist Hospital, have been in continuing dialogue with experts on infectious disease, and established an extensive protocol. But the spread of COVID-19 is moving quickly around the world,” the organizers added. ASEAN summit The Trump administration postponed a March 14 summit with the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. President Trump invited ASEAN leaders to a meeting in Las Vegas after he did not attend a November summit with the group in Bangkok, Reuters reported. Geneva International Auto Show The annual Geneva International Motor Show was canceled as the Swiss government put an immediate ban on all public and private events involving more than 1,000 people, CNET reported. The ban is expected to last until at least March 15. “We are aware that this measure will have a significant impact on public life,” said Switzerland’s interior minister, Alain Berset. The event, originally slated to kick off March 5, was expected to generate up to 250 million Swiss francs (or $257 million) in spending, according to the AP. Switzerland has reported 15 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus. It borders northern Italy, which has seen the largest cluster of cases in Europe. Other affected events include the traditional Carnival procession in Basel, a ski marathon and several soccer matches, according to the AP. Alex Sundby contributed reporting. Exhibitors have to dismantle their displays after cancellation of the Geneva Auto Show on February 28 in Geneva, Switzerland. Hundreds of coronavirus cases have been confirmed in nearby northern Italy and smaller numbers are being confirmed daily across western Europe. Robert Hradil / Getty Images The post Closed due to coronavirus: List of activities and state shutdowns over COVID-19 outbreak concerns appeared first on Shri Times.

http://sansaartimes.blogspot.com/2020/07/closed-due-to-coronavirus-list-of.html

[lonmcq]

Austin Area Jazz Festival

Austin Area Jazz Festival

NOV 29-30, 2019

Austin Area Jazz Festival

Austin, Texas, USA

All roads lead to Austin Texas for the 5th Annual Austin Area Jazz Festival Performances by SHEILA E., KIRK WHALUM, WALTER BEASLEY, AVERY*SUNSHINE, TOM BROWNE, JEFF BRADSHAW, CINDY BRADLEY and MIKE HAMILTON! Building a legacy of great jazz in Austin!

[1lmw]

Austin Area Jazz Festival

Austin Area Jazz Festival

NOV 29-30, 2019

Austin Area Jazz Festival

Austin, Texas, USA

All roads lead to Austin Texas for the 5th Annual Austin Area Jazz Festival Performances by SHEILA E., KIRK WHALUM, WALTER BEASLEY, AVERY*SUNSHINE, TOM BROWNE, JEFF BRADSHAW, CINDY BRADLEY and MIKE HAMILTON! Building a legacy of great jazz in Austin!

[itsfinancethings]

October 26, 2019 at 07:00AM

On September 30, 1970, a reporter asked Janis Joplin to explain her fearless sexuality. “It seems to bother a lot of women’s lib people that you’re kind of so upfront sexually,” Village Voice writer Howard Smith told her. Joplin, by then accustomed to such criticism, responded: “I’m representing everything they said they want.… It’s sort of like: you are what you settle for.… You’re only as much as you settle for. If you don’t settle for that and you keep fighting it, you know, you’ll end up anything you want to be… I’m just doing what I wanted to and what feels right and not settling for bullshit and it worked. How can they be mad at that?”

Janis made it sound as if fighting the urge to settle was the most natural thing to her. But deep down inside there had always been the yearning for doing exactly that: getting the house, the white picket fence and the husband. They had been the middle-class hopes of her mother, Dorothy, who herself had fought hard for a life of stability in 1950s Port Arthur, Texas. Janis, her mother’s daughter, was often tormented about leaving that white picket fence behind. “I keep pushing so hard the dream/I keep tryin’ to make it right/Through another lonely day,” she sang in “Kozmic Blues.”

She was born a misfit—a tomboy, a painter, a girl who didn’t accept arbitrary boundaries, a girl with a big voice—but she never stopped wanting to belong. That’s why, years later at the age of 25, it had been so daring of her to leave behind the band that had launched her, Big Brother and the Holding Company. She had joined the group in San Francisco in June 1966 and two months later they were bunking communally in Marin County. Despite technical shortcomings as musicians, they were a dynamic live band with a solid following, and they correctly saw in Janis the element that would elevate them to status similar to their Haight-Ashbury scene-mates Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. Sure enough, Big Brother and the Holding Company broke big in June 1967 at the Monterey Pop Festival, signing with Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman, who secured a lucrative deal for them with Columbia Records.

But Joplin was beginning to feel again that part of her that would not settle. Her ambition ratcheted up. She looked more to her heroes Nina Simone and Etta James. Rather than shriek over Big Brother’s blaring psychedelic “freak rock,” Joplin longed to work her voice with more nuance, and explore soul and other musical genres; she envisioned keyboards, a horn section, more sophisticated tunes. In remarkable letters she wrote her parents, she explained, “I have to find the best musicians in the world & get together & work. There’ll be a whole lot of pressure because of the ‘vibes’ created by my leaving Big Brother & also by just how big I am now. So we’ve got to be just super when we start playing—but we will be.” To New York Times reporter Michael Lydon, she admitted: “I’m scared. I think, ‘It’s so close. Can I make it?’ If I fail, I’ll fail in front of the whole world. If I miss, I’ll never have a second chance on nothing. But I gotta risk it. I never hold back…” Anyone who really knew her would not have been surprised by her leap of faith. As a roughhousing tomboy in Port Arthur, she’d exhibited a fierce will not unlike that of her father, Seth, who led a double life as a Texaco engineer by day, and a cerebral bookworm and atheist by night. He and Dorothy adored their daughter, but their showdowns were legend—Janis refusing to do what she was told, damn the consequences. With adolescence came compulsive risk-taking; she was the female “mascot” among a group of outlier intellectual boys, a role that helped set a bold Joplin in motion.

Unlike her father, Joplin would not hide her defiance. She vocally opposed segregation in her high school, which made her a target of bullies and racists. She sought out the hard-to-find music of Lead Belly and Bessie Smith, sneaking out to juke joints with boys, and was accused of sleeping with her male companions. At 17, after a midnight ramble in New Orleans, she crashed her father’s car. She would soothe the shame with alcohol, the first drug on which she became dependent. And then she’d do it all again.

Joplin found temporary solace in traveling, which she’d been introduced to by Kerouac’s On the Road, a game-changer for her. Her first taste of freedom came at 19, when she briefly lived like a beatnik in Venice Beach, California, then hitchhiked alone to San Francisco, before hightailing it back to Texas. She soon cultivated an ardent following of fellow college students in Austin, who clamored to hear her sing blues, country, and folk with her first group, the Waller Creek Boys.

Forever restless, Joplin hitchhiked for the second time to San Francisco the day after her 20th birthday in 1963. Already writing songs and accompanying herself on an autoharp, she floored audiences in the Bay Area, gaining confidence and vocal skill, gig by gig. But after spending the summer of ’64 in New York’s Lower East Side, where she learned to play 12-string guitar, Joplin became addicted to methamphetamines. She returned to Port Arthur yet again, sobered up at the Joplin homestead, and attempted to renounce her life as an artist. But she could not resist opportunities to perform in Houston and Austin clubs, where her voice manifested ever more powerfully, an uncorked siren calling her away from the life of dutiful commuter student and sociology major at Beaumont’s Lamar Tech. At age 23, after sharing a bill in Austin with the 13th Floor Elevators, she split town for Haight-Ashbury yet again. When she wrote her parents to give them her whereabouts, she promised to stay clean.

In just over a year, she achieved much of what she thought she wanted, but chafed at the constraints of Big Brother. As she turned to heroin to soften anxiety and fears of rejection, her urge to rebel—even within the parameters of the counterculture—could not be reined in. “I’ve been doing it for 26 years,” she told the New York Times in 1969, conflating her age and her lifelong iconoclasm, “and all the people who were trying to compromise me are now coming to me, man. You better not compromise yourself, it’s all you got.… I’m a goddamn living example of that…. People aren’t supposed to be like me, sing like me, make out like me, drink like me, live like me, but now they’re paying me $50,000 a year for me to be like me. That’s what I hope I mean to those kids out there… that they can be themselves and win. You just have to start thinking that way, being that righteous with yourself, and you’ve won already.”

Joplin’s great champion Ellen Willis, a rare female rock critic of the era, worried for post-Big Brother Janis in the pages of The New Yorker. “Did Big Brother perhaps give her more than we realized?” she wrote. As often happens with performers, Joplin had to learn in public, so the initial answer to this question was a resounding maybe. Only three months after assembling her back-up players, Joplin was still finding her way, which showed in her two-night stand at New York’s Fillmore East. Joplin didn’t fall back on her usual over-the-top performance techniques, but modulated herself, doing the “kind of things that milk you rather than hammer you,” she said. Willis was one of the few critics who seemed to get it.

Rolling Stone’s Paul Nelson resolutely panned the shows, describing Joplin as “The Judy Garland of Rock” who “strangled the songs to death.” Six weeks later, when she performed back in San Francisco at Bill Graham’s Winterland, her “people” did not call for an encore—a first on her own turf. Afterwards in the dressing room, journalist John Bowers noted, “She is pale, as if in shock, saying, ‘San Francisco’s changed, man. Where are my people? They used to be so wild. I know I sang well! I know I did!’” One of her earliest fans, esteemed jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason, advised her in his San Francisco Chronicle column to “scrap this band and go right back to being a member of Big Brother if they’ll have her.”

Hurt but undaunted, Joplin continued to pursue her musical vision. She recorded her debut solo album, I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, its title alluding to a persistent existential dread her father had called “the Saturday night swindle.” She’d written new songs including “One Good Man,” a Bessie Smith blues update. Other material ranged from her adaptation of the Chantels’ “Maybe,” a favorite from her teen years, and Rodgers and Hart’s “Little Girl Blue,” inspired by the 1959 Nina Simone recording of the song. (Simone would later applaud Joplin’s version.)

The album debuted on Billboard on October 11, 1969, remained there for 28 weeks and gradually moved up to #5. Joplin’s aching original “Kozmic Blues” just missed the Top 40, hitting #41. Reviews were lukewarm, with Joplin, again, being taken to task—by male critics—for being “bent on becoming Aretha Franklin” and dumping Big Brother. An exception was an insightful Village Voice piece by Johanna Schier (later Johanna Hall, coauthor of the Pearl track, “Half Moon”), who wrote that Joplin “was singing stronger and better… The top of her range is more solid and her vocal control is maturing… She breaks through into greatness by anyone’s standards.” Backed by her Kozmic Blues Band, she would play the biggest venues of her career to date, including a sold-out concert on December 19 at Madison Square Garden.

Bettmann ArchiveJanis Joplin and her final group, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, perform at the Festival for Peace at Shea Stadium in August 1970.

The first year of her brief solo flight, Joplin headlined Woodstock, performing an hour-long set in the middle of the night, singing until her voice gave out. She made her debut on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Dick Cavett Show, appeared on the cover of Newsweek (the cover line: “The Rebirth of the Blues”), and toured Europe for the first time, a series of concerts garnering rapturous responses. At London’s Royal Albert Hall, she’d even managed to roust a sold-out, normally staid audience from their seats.

Joplin remained peripatetic, musically speaking, and driven. She’d learned to play and sing Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee,” and the song opened new doors. Joplin sought a smaller, rootsier-sounding unit to bring it, and other material, to life. She would christen this group Full Tilt Boogie. With them, she would mature as a bandleader and co-producer of her recorded output, all gloriously evident on her final album, Pearl, and in footage of Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie’s live performances. Following her death during the Pearl sessions, on October 4, 1970, “Me and Bobby McGee” topped the charts for two weeks, and Pearl became the most commercially successful album of her career. Despite her kozmic blues and the critics’ initial discouragement, Joplin, of course, had refused to settle for anything less than traveling the road her music took her.

[alternative-eyes]

https://s29883.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Love-Ablan-300x300.jpg

Art provides an intimate exploration of interconnectivity, a journey into a universal language displayed in a tapestry of diversity, interwoven through vibrant threads of rhythms, sounds, tones, vibrations, movements, hues, shades, costumes, theatrics. The healing power of art is an unexplainable magnificence that starts deep within and spirals outward into an array of beauty and brilliance. Art in many forms has carried messages from one, to many – social, political, ecological issues and movements effectively protested through unique expressions that captivate purpose, intention, personal and collective consciousness. Art reveals the mysteries of the darkness we experience, while emboldening the light within to shine and spread in richness, creativity, and splendor.

At the IONS 18th International Conference this July in Santa Clara, California, we will gather together to explore what is possible for humanity and the role artistic creations play in our transformation. Join us for an interactive conversation with our Art and Consciousness Paneists Aranka Israni, Marco Cochrane, Fariba Bogzaran, Bertram Meyer, and Dana Lynne Anderson. You’ll be taken on a journey through visual art by Aranka Israni and engage in participatory artwork with Love Ablan, Jeremy Capdevielle, and Laurie Marshall. Experience musical performances by Mandhu Anziani, Thrive Choir, and Afrolicious.

For four days, you’ll also have the opportunity to discover yourself through deep transformation across a spectrum of healing modalities. The conference will offer morning yoga, meditation, and therapeutic practices in addition to a Gaia-sponsored lounge of relaxation. Our Inner Space Experiential Village will offer an eclectic mix of experiences and offerings: multimedia and interactive storytelling art, educational resources, massage therapy, biofield tuning and sound healing, life coaching, and much more.

Featured Panelists, Visual Artists, and Musical Performers

Aranka Israni | Artist I am intrigued by the capture, preservation and examination of moments between moments. My practice is deeply grounded in the alchemical process and representations of energy in conversion from one expression to another – of emotion as it seeks expansion, transmutation and release. My work is rooted in transformation, acknowledging separation that moves into union, and wholeness that is capable of stepping apart from itself and viewing its own nature.

  Dana Lynne Andersen | Artist Dana Lynne Andersen is a multimedia artist, writer, playwright and teacher who has taught and exhibited on three continents. With a Masters Degree in Consciousness Studies from John F. Kennedy University she uses art as a catalyst for seeding evolutionary ideas, showing in venues such as the California Institute of Integral Studies and the Institute of Noetic Sciences (where she was artist in residence). Her artwork has been featured on the covers of books and journals internationally, and her visionary thinking has been explored in newspapers, radio and television.

Fariba Bogzaran | Co-Founder of The Lucid Art Foundation Lucid art is the convergence of the universal creative force expressed in a spontaneous work of art that elicits in the viewer a sudden awakening of an aspect of the inner worlds. The Lucid Art Foundation was established in 1998 to support artists who explore the concepts of arts and consciousness.  Fariba Bogzaran, PhD 1994, is artist/scientist, and founder of the Dream Studies program at John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley, California, where she taught as an associate professor for 25 years. She teaches lucid dreaming at CIIS and gives lectures internationally. Using her art-based research, she co-founded Lucid Art Foundation (1998) with the surrealist painter Gordon Onslow Ford. She established an artist residency program for the foundation where artists work and live in the heart of nature. Fariba has lived adjunct to wilderness for the past thirty years and is active in earth’s preservation.

Marco Cochrane | Artist, Sculptor, Metal Worker Marco believes that the time we have to solve the problems that threaten our existence on this planet is running out, and that the key to finding real lasting solutions is bringing feminine energy into balance with male energy: a global shift, already underway.

  Bertram Meyer | Co-founder of ONEDOME Bertram Meyer is a serial entrepreneur who is the Co-founder and CEO of ONEDOME. Bertram is passionate about impactful and mission-driven businesses and in showing that they can be very profitable at the same time. ONEDOME is an immersive entertainment platform and destination, including the first permanent, interactive, multi-user mixed-reality experience (using AR). In collaboration with global creatives, innovators, artists and technologists, they curate interactive arts and immersive experiences that inspire a shift in the audience from the “Me” to the “We.”

Jeremy Capdevielle | Artist & Entrepreneur With a certificate in drama therapy, a degree in organizational behavior, and experience leading learning journeys in eight countries, Jeremy brings levity, fun, and depth wherever he goes. He’s a dedicated people geek who loves supporting leaders to leverage their power and voice to build belonging. As head of partnerships at Socially Creative, Jeremy cultivates relationships with visionary leaders to further the mission of belonging and collective creativity. When not people geeking out you can likely find him surfing with the dolphins (and trying to not think of great whites) just north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Laurie Marshall | Artist For 40 years, Laurie’s goal has been to empower young people to have a positive impact on the challenges they face. What if we asked them to do only important work? Her passion for collaborative innovation, project-based learning, and arts integration has taken her to rural and urban classrooms. She co-founded a Waldorf-inspired parent cooperative named Hearthstone which is still going strong after 32 years.  Laurie has facilitated learning with universities,  government agencies, and businesses. In coaching teachers and administrators in public and private schools, she focuses on developing meaningful projects to heal community heartbreak (academic mastery always follows), violence prevention, and peace-building through art.  She models creative collaboration through the Singing Tree Mural Project  a youth-led process, inspired by trees, where communities make a shared vision of success. 74 murals have been made by 16,000 people from 50 countries so far.

Anziani | Sound Healer Through the complete recovery of being a wheelchair bound quadriplegic Madhu has learned vibrational vocal healing techniques from various traditions, including Tibetan Buddhism, Wisdom Healing Qi Gong, Peruvian Cross-Cultural Shamanism, and Taoism. A sound healer extraordinaire, he has also studied Jazz and World Music and went on to be certified in Sound, Voice, and Music Healing at CIIS. In his sessions he offers energy healing on an amethyst Crystal Biomat, using tuning forks tuned to sacred number ratios, as well as offering techniques and guidance for opening the healing power of the voice.

Thrive Choir The Thrive Choir was born to sing the music for the revolution. They are a diverse group of vocalists, artists, activists, educators, healers, and community organizers based in Oakland, California, directed by Bay Area musicians Austin Willacy and Kyle Lemle. Their heartfelt and soul-stirring original music is a fusion of gospel, soul and folk. As part of Thrive East Bay — a purpose-driven community focused on personal and social transformation — the Choir’s music illuminates the joy, pain, and beauty of what it means to be human in this time of systemic transformation. They lift up the house every first Sunday at Thrive East Bay in downtown Oakland; they have performed with Rising Appalachia, recorded with MaMuse, and shared the stage with social justice luminaries Ericka Huggins, Joanna Macy, and Fania Davis. They perform at marches, conferences and festivals across California, most recently at Bioneers, Blessed Unrest, IONS, the North America Permaculture Convergence, and the Women’s March. They are also launching a larger Thrive Street Choir, mobilizing hundreds of people to sing in hope and resistance at protests and beyond.

Afrolicious | Live Electronic Band Afrolicious has established itself as both one of the most legendary weekly parties in San Francisco, and of the top live/electronic bands on the scene. Started as a weekly dance party featuring DJs and brothers Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz alongside percussionists, MCs and horn players, and an amazing crowd from day one.  Between their weekly party and sound system shows that involve the brothers DJing alongside live percussion, they also have a six-piece live band that emphasizes the organic elements, instrumentation, and energy of a live ensemble combined with club heavy beats and textures the weekly party has come to be known for. The Afrolicious band and sound system has performed at such legendary venues as Red Rocks, Sierra Nevada World Music Festival, Electric Forest Festival, Snow Globe, Burningman, Sea of Dreams, The Independent, Great American Music Hall, Elbo Room in San Francsico (five plus years weekly residency), Cielo, Nublu, Bembe, Zanzibar, and Silent Frisco.

Love Ablan | Artist, Visual Storyteller, Biohacker, Adventure Guide Love Ablan believes the world is a magical place and everyone’s a hero on an epic journey. She is here to bring light, magic, and voice to these journeys, and help these stories come to life. Love resides on the sparkly shores of Los Angeles, and the misty docks of Martha’s Vineyard. Love is everywhere. As a Visual Storyteller, BioHacker and Adventure Guide, she travels the world learning self-mastery and meditation techniques from teachers of both ancient and modern traditions. Love combines art, meditation, and neuroscience to create visceral experiences that help everyday people master their minds, break self-limiting beliefs and patterns, and live a more meaningful, joyful, and authentic life.

The post Experience Transformative Art appeared first on IONS.

Experience Transformative Art https://noetic.org/blog/experience-transformative-art/

[jazzworldquest-blog]

USA: #JAZZ "Transitions," New CD from the Marcus Shelby Orchestra, Set for June 7 Release by MSO Records

Marcus Shelby

Places Suite Exploring Negro League Baseball

At the Heart of "Transitions,"

Set for June 7 Release by MSO Records

Bassist-Composer-Bandleader's Latest  

Features Four-Part Suite,  

Seven Standards Performed by His 15-Piece Big Band,

Special Guests Mads Tolling & Tiffany Austin

Performances as Resident Artistic Director

At SFJAZZ, 5/23-26

        April 26, 2019

Bassist, composer, and bandleader Marcus Shelby brings together three of his greatest passions -- African-American history, baseball, and big-band jazz -- on Transitions, the latest work by his 15-piece Marcus Shelby Orchestra, set for a June 7 release on his own MSO Records. While the album offers Shelby's lush arrangements of classic tunes by Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, and Cole Porter, its centerpiece "Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues" is an original four-part suite inspired by the history of Negro League Baseball. It also features superb work by two special guests, violinist Mads Tolling and acclaimed vocalist Tiffany Austin.

Shelby's work to date has established his penchant for deep musical dives into African-American history and culture. Transitions is not a full-length opus like his 2007 oratorio Harriet Tubman or 2011's Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but it is unquestionably on the same ambitious path as those two works. It's also a natural choice of subject matter for San Francisco-based Shelby, a self-described baseball aficionado who (when he's not on the bandstand) can often be found cheering on his beloved San Francisco Giants.

"I did a whole theatrical project that premiered last September at the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival," he explains. "It re-created the environment of a Negro League baseball park. This suite was inspired by the research I did for that project. But it's more about these four cities -- Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago, Kansas City -- that were very central to the Negro Leagues."

    Those were also central to the development of jazz, and Shelby's pieces reflect the parts they played in that development. The suite's opening "Transition 1 (Pittsburgh)," a nod to two powerhouse teams (the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays), also reflects the city's blues tradition and the hard swing generated by native-son drummers from Art Blakey to Jeff "Tain" Watts. Its finale, "Black Ball Swing (Kansas City)," celebrates the Kansas City Monarchs -- "the best known, most respected team of all time in the Negro Leagues," Shelby says -- with both the riff-driven style of the Count Basie Orchestra and the supercharged bebop of Charlie Parker, both Kansas City exports.

Transitions also includes one composition each by Charles Mingus and George Shearing, along with two by Cole Porter and three by the grand master of big band writing, Duke Ellington. It's "an album that mirrors a live performance," he says. "It's like seeing one of our concerts. It felt good to break away from doing programmatic music to playing some straight-up blues and swing and standards." The Duke's gorgeous but rarely played "On a Turquoise Cloud" is a feature for guest violinist Tolling, while his "Mood Indigo"and "Solitude," along with Shearing's "Lullaby of Birdland"and the two Porter tunes, are vehicles for Tiffany Austin's vocals.

   Marcus Shelby was born February 2, 1966 in Anchorage, Alaska, moving to Sacramento, California at the age of five. He played the bass as a teenager, but his real passion was for baseball and basketball, earning a college scholarship in the latter. At 22, however, a concert by the Wynton Marsalis Quartet reignited his love of music, and he returned to school at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, where he studied with Charlie Haden and James Newton.

First gaining attention in Los Angeles as a cofounder (with drummer Willie Jones III) of the hard-bop band Black/Note in the early 1990s, Shelby relocated to San Francisco in 1996. He quickly established himself as an essential creative force on the Bay Area arts scene, leading both the Marcus Shelby Trio and the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra and earning increasingly prestigious commissions from dance companies, theatrical productions, and presenters.

Shelby opened a new chapter with the release of 2006's Port Chicago (Noir), a major orchestral work inspired by the World War II incident that saw 50 young black seamen convicted in the largest mutiny trial in U.S. naval history. Since then he's focused his creative energy on a series of meticulously researched, hard-swinging works exploring African American history, like 2007's Harriet Tubman (Noir) and 2011's Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Porto Franco).

Marcus Shelby will perform as Resident Artistic Director at SFJAZZ, 201 Franklin St, San Francisco, Thursday 5/23 through Sunday 5/26. The four-night run will feature the artist in collaborations literary (with Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket), political (with Angela Davis), and Ellingtonian (with Faye Carol, Kenny Washington, and Mads Tolling), along with an evening dedicated to the performance of "Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues." 

  Remember Rockefeller at Attica - Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra

    Web Site: marcusshelby.com 

        Media Contact:

Terri Hinte 510-234-8781 hudba@sbcglobal.net terrihinte.com  

via Blogger http://bit.ly/2WbnAQ9

[robinsoncenter]

[Qsc_asuw] SPRING! Newsletter Week 3

Welcome        to Week 3! <3 

QTBIPOC Artist Spotlight        of the Week:

Sonia Lazo

Illustrator and graphic design        student Illustrator from small and tropical El Salvador. Sonia        Lazo is creating attention-getting art. Her lively, intriguing work        addresses not only the world we live in but also unseen worlds—the land        of the past and the realms of myth and fantasy.

The QSC Director is moving on to        other opportunities. Now, it's your turn to take a swing at        change-making and advocacy! Apply today to be the new QSC Director!

Applications close        April 21st, 2019 at 11:55 pm.        In addition, every position at ASUW is hiring! If you're interested in        serving in different capacities, check out all available        positions here!

The mission of        the Queer Student Commission (QSC) is to first support, educate, and to        provide an open-minded environment for queer UW students. In addition,        it aims to provide non-heteronormative, anti-racist, non-ableist and        non-sexist programming, services, and atmospheres. The commission aims        to create an anti-oppressive community by funding, sponsoring and        endorsing events, ideas and information that share these        anti-oppressive principles, promoting community, and working to        increase acceptance of queer students.        The QSC also values the development of leadership skills among its        members by encouraging them to be involved with commission activities        and operations. Furthermore, the QSC commits to itself to inclusivity        and intersectional activism by maintaining strong relationships with        other ASUW Commissions, student groups, community groups, and UW        faculty and the Student Activities Office (SAO) staff.

The Queer        & Trans People of Color Alliance (QTPOCA) will        be meeting this Friday, location TBD!

Machismo and Toxic        Masculinity        (Monday, April 15,        2019) 6 PM - 8 PM @ ECC Unity Room        ASUW SARVA and ASUW La Raza Present:      

A             roundtable dissection of machismo and toxic masculinity in the             Latinx community with La Raza Student Commission.

Celebration of        National Poetry Month!        (Tuesday, April 16,        2019) 7 PM - 9 PM @ Warby Parker (305 East Pine Street, Seattle)        305 East Pine Street, Seattle, Washington 98102

SAL is delighted to partner with        Warby Parker to present a free poetry reading at Warby Parker Capitol        Hill. This celebration features 2016/17 Youth Poet Laureate, Maven        Gardner; members of the 2018/19 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate Cohort,        Maia Ruth Pody, Alex Newsom, and Kiyoshi Sakauye; Washington State Poet        Laureate Claudia Castro Luna; and Seattle Civic Poet Anastacia-Reneé.

Seattle Reads        presents Thi Bui        (Tuesday, April        16) 6:30 - 8 PM @ Asian Counseling and Referral Service (ACRS)        

3639 Martin Luther King Jr Way S, Seattle,          Washington 98144

       Thi Bui will discuss "The Best We Could Do." The evening will        also feature a staged reading from the book, adapted by Susan Lieu and        directed by Kathy Hsieh, in partnership with Book-It Repertory Theatre.              

"The             Best We Could Do" is a haunting memoir about the search for a             better future and a longing for a simpler past. Thi Bui documents             her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the             1970s and the difficulties they faced building new lives for             themselves in America. As the child of a country and a war she             can’t remember, Bui’s dreamlike artwork brings to life her journey             to understanding her own identity in a way that only comics can.   

Thi Bui was born in Vietnam three        months before the end of the Vietnam War, and came to the United States        in 1978 as part of the “boat people” wave of refugees from Southeast        Asia. Her debut graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do (Abrams ComicArts,        2017), has been selected as UCLA’s Common Book for 2017, a National        Book Critics Circle finalist in autobiography, an Eisner Award finalist        in Reality Based Comics, and made several Best of 2017 book lists,        including Bill Gates’s top five picks. Bui is also the Caldecott        Honor-winning illustrator of A Different Pond, a picture book by the        poet Bao Phi (Capstone, 2017). Her short comics can be found online at        the Nib, PEN America, and BOOM California.                Seattle Reads is a “one book, one city” program, where people are        encouraged to read and discuss the same book. It’s designed to deepen        engagement in literature through reading and discussion.        - Everyone is invited to participate in Seattle Reads by reading the        featured book, joining in a book discussion, and/or attending programs        with the featured writer.

Baile Folklórico        comes to the University of Washington        (Wednesday,        April 17) 7-9 PM @ wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ - Intellectual        House   

Come             join us at the Intellectual House to learn how to dance the             traditional Mexican dance known as Baile Folklórico. The             instructors will be from the group "Ballet Folklorico Angeles             de México". We ask for you to bring small heels or flats (non-marking             shoes) and water is encouraged! The event is free, for UW students             only. Any questions please email herres@uw.edu.

       (Tuesday, April        16) 7-9PM @ Elliott Bay Book Company        1521 10th Ave, Seattle, Washington 98122

Hanif        Abdurraqib at Elliott Bay Book Company

Elliott Bay Book Company presents Hanif Abdurraqib for        his New York Times Bestselling book GO AHEAD IN THE RAIN.     

How             does one pay homage to A Tribe Called Quest? The seminal rap group             brought jazz into the genre, resurrecting timeless rhythms to             create masterpieces such as The Low End Theory and Midnight             Marauders. Seventeen years after their last album, they resurrected             themselves with an intense, socially conscious record, We Got It             from Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service, which arrived when fans             needed it most, in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Poet and             essayist Hanif Abdurraqib digs into the group’s history and draws             from his own experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound             resonated among fans like himself. The result is as ambitious and             genre-bending as the rap group itself.       

Abdurraqib traces the Tribe’s creative career, from        their early days as part of the Afrocentric rap collective known as the        Native Tongues, through their first three classic albums, to their        eventual breakup and long hiatus. Their work is placed in the context        of the broader rap landscape of the 1990s, one upended by sampling laws        that forced a reinvention in production methods, the East Coast-West        Coast rivalry that threatened to destroy the genre, and some record        labels’ shift from focusing on groups to individual MCs. Throughout the        narrative Abdurraqib connects the music and cultural history to their        street-level impact. Whether he’s remembering The Source magazine cover        announcing the Tribe’s 1998 breakup or writing personal letters to the        group after bandmate Phife Dawg’s death, Abdurraqib seeks the deeper        truths of A Tribe Called Quest; truths that—like the low end, the        bass—are not simply heard in the head, but felt in the chest.                This event is Free and Open to the Public.

DISABILITY MONTH        APRIL 2019         

Sara Acevedo: Building Collectively Toward Institutional Access

(Wednesday, April 17)  5-6 PM @ HUB 340

F*** Stairs Kick Off

(Friday, April 19) 4-5 PM @ HUB 340 

Disability Studies Program Brown Bag Sharan Brown

(Tuesday, April 30) 12-1 PM @ MGH 024

Sexual Assault Open Mic 

(Tuesday, April 30) 5-7 PM@ HUB 340

ASUW SDC Presents:        ASL Workshop        (Thursday,        April 18) 5-7 PM @ HUB 332       

Learn             the basics of American Sign Language from the UW ASL Club,             featuring presentations from TEDxUCLA speaker Austin Vaday and UW             Professor Lance Forshay.       

ACCESSIBILITY        INFORMATION       

CART             captioning and ASL/voice interpretation will be provided.     

This             event is a scent-free space! Please refrain from using scented             products if you will be in attendance.      

F*** Stairs Kick Off        (Friday, April 19) 4-5 PM @ HUB 340        

Come             learn about the purpose of the pledge, hear from Disability Rights             advocates, and celebrate the beginning of our 2019 F*** Stairs             campaign!

        There             will be donuts, veggies, coffee/tea, and lemonade! (Vegan/gluten             free options available)      

ACCESSIBILITY        INFORMATION:       

CART             Captioning will be provided.     

This             is a scent free event! Please refrain from using scented products             if you plan on attending.

2019 Youth Speaks        Seattle Grand Slam        (Friday, April        19) 6-10 PM @ Kings Hall MS LLC        2929 27th Ave S, Seattle, Washington 98144  

After             months of preliminary slams, join Youth Speaks Seattle in our             finale and the biggest youth poetry event of the year: GRAND SLAM.       

10             of the highest-scoring poets of the season grace the stage for one             transformative night of competition, storytelling, and community             celebration. By the end of the night, the top 5 poets will be             chosen to represent Team Seattle at renowned international youth             poetry festival, Brave New Voices, this year in Las Vegas. You             don't want to miss this!       

TICKETS:        $10 for youth        $20 for adults                Tickets available at the door and Brown Paper Tickets. Email        slam@artscorps for discounts on groups of 5+ youth ($7)!                HOSTED BY: Youth Speaks Seattle teaching artists, award-winning poets        Ebo Barton, and Youth Poet Laureate of Seattle, Azura Tyabji.                FEATURING: Incredible singer and organizer, JustMoni                ACCESSIBILITY        INFORMATION:    

King's             Hall is below and behind the Mt. Baker Light Rail Station Stop

Bus             Routes nearby are 8, 48, 14, 7, 9, 106, 987 (many of which are             available at the Mt. Baker Transfer Station)      

Parking:             There is a parking lot available at Kings Hall and overflow             parking available next door at the University of Washington             Consolidated Laundry parking lot.  

No             stairs or ramps necessary to enter King's Hall.     

Two             wheelchair accessible, gender free restrooms on the main floor.    

Four             spaces in the parking lot are designated for folks with disabled             parking placards.

CART             services will be available at this event.      

This             is not a scent free event/space but to request a scent free zone,             email slam@artscorps.org             by March 29th (acknowledging that King's Hall is not a scent free             space overall).

For             anyone needing seating anywhere in the seating area, we are happy             to accommodate by moving any chairs.     

There             will be a row of seating reserved for folks that need access to             the front for visibility.

Have             access needs that are not listed here? Please email slam@artscorps.org             with any questions, comments or concerns    

YOUTH RIGHT NOW ARE THE TRUTH        RIGHT NOW!

Emergent        Strategy: An Evening with Adrienne Maree Brown

       (Thursday, April 18,        2019) 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM @ 

The Seattle Public Library

       Central Library, 1000 4th Ave, Seattle, Washington 98104           

Join             activist and author Adrienne Maree Brown for a reading centered on             her book "Emergent Strategy" and a celebration of             community-led organizing in Seattle.    

This event is made possible with        support from The Seattle Public Library        Foundation and the Seattle Office of Civil Rights.                ACCESSIBILITY        INFORMATION:

This             program will be ASL interpreted.

Pasifik Voices Spring        2019        (Wednesday, April 24,        2019) 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM @ ECT       

We             are back for the last Pasifik Voices of the school year! You know             the drill: come out and join us for a night of showcasing and             celebrating the unique talents and performances of individuals who             make up the greater Pacific Islander community on the UW campus!       

As             always, you can look forward to... music, dance, art,             spoken-word, community and more!    

Admission             is FREE, bring all your homies!     

Interested in performing?        Sign up NOW at: tinyurl.com/pvspring2019                 Interested in MCing?        Apply here: https://forms.gle/GFHgbk6di1ZrCVhx7

SARVA, WAC,        D-Center and SDC Present: Open Mic Night        (Tuesday,        April 30, 2019) 5-87PM @ HUB 340       

Join             this safe space and hear stories from disabled survivors of             assault and domestic violence.       

Light refreshments will be provided! (Vegan/gluten free        options available!)                ACCESSIBILITY        INFORMATION:       

CART             Captioning will be provided. 

This             is a scent free space! Please refrain from using scented products             if you plan on attending.

Transgender &        Gender Diverse Support & Social Group        (Wednesday,        April 10, 2019) 6-8 PM @ U.T.O.P.I.A Seattle         205 E. Meeker St. Kent, Washington 98032  

[trans]             ACTION is             a support/social group for sex workers that is held every first             Wednesday of every month. It is an opportunity that provides sex             workers a safe space to engage in topical discussions relating to             their life and/or work. This gathering is open to transgender and             gender diverse sex workers with current or past experience in the             sex trade.    

Discussions include topics such        as:  

*Safety             and self- care

*Decriminalization             and Destigmatization of sex work   

*Know             your rights training    

*Legal             assistance   

*Employment             & housing      

[trans]             ACTION promotes and values confidentiality regarding interactions             within the group.   

The        undisclosed location has ample parking, all-gender and ADA-accessible        restroom. Come and build community with us! For more information please        email Ara-lei at ara@utopiaseattle.org                 Upcoming Dates :    

Wed             May 8 (6-8pm)     

Wed             June 12 (6-8pm)

       Let’s Talk is a free        program that connects UW students with support from experienced        counselors from the Counseling Center and Hall Health Center without an        appointment. Counselors hold drop-in hours        at four sites on campus:               

Mondays, 2-4 PM, Odegaard Library Room 222

        Tuesdays, 2-4 PM, Ethnic Cultural Center Room 306

        Wednesdays, 2-4 PM, Q Center (HUB 315)

        Thursdays, 2-4 PM, Mary Gates Hall Room 134E       

Let’s Talk offers        informal consultation – it is not a substitute for regular therapy,        counseling, or psychiatric care.        To learn        more, visit letstalk.washington.edu.                The HUB’s front entrance is wheelchair accessible and the common area        is to the right of the main desk.        An all-genders restroom can be found at the 3rd floor, down the hallway        from the Q Center. Gender binary bathrooms with multiple stalls can be        found on each floor of the HUB.        The HUB IS not kept scent-free but we ask that you do not wear        scented/fragranced products (e.g. perfume, hair products) or essential        oils to/in the Q Center in order to make the space accessible to those        with chemical injury or multiple chemical sensitivity. 

Thank you for being a part of our community <3         We are so glad that you are here, and we are so glad to get to know        you!         Have questions about the QSC? Just want to get involved? Find our        office hours online at hours.asuw.org.        To hear more from the QSC be sure to like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter & instagram to stay up to date with        all queer and trans related happenings on campus and in Seattle!                 With love,         Mehria Ibrahimi, Outreach & Engagement Intern. 

Find Out More

[the-record-briefs]

April 10, 2019: In other news

Wilkes-based group to compete in MeleFest

 band competition

The Wilkes County-based band, Alex Key and the Locksmiths, will    participate in the MerleFest Band Competition.

The event will be held on the Plaza Stage    on Saturday the April 27 from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Judged by members of The Local Boys and emceed by Mark Bumgarner, the    competition’s winners will be announced at 4 p.m. on the Plaza Stage. The winning band will head over to the Cabin Stage, where    they will perform to an enthusiastic MerleFest audience from 6:35 to 7    p.m. 

This year’s    band competition finalists also include Shay Martin Lovette (Boone), Pretty Little Goat (Brevard), None of the Above (Piedmont Triad), Brooks Forsyth (Boone), Massive Grass (Wilmington), Redleg Husky (Asheville),    and The Mike Mitchell Band (Floyd,    Va.).

MerleFest has    also announced the winners of the 2019 Chris Austin Songwriting    Competition.

From its first    incarnation in 1993, MerleFest’s annual Chris Austin    Songwriting Competition has seen    the likes of Gillian Welch, Tift Merritt, and Martha Scanlan rise to the    top of an always competitive field of up-and-coming    songwriters. Legendary songwriters have presided over the competition    from the start as judges, too. Darrell Scott, Hayes Carll, and the late,    great Guy Clark have all taken a turn at judging the CASC. This year,    the event will be judged byJoey    Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale, better known as The Milk Carton Kids, Cruz Contreras of    The Black Lillies, and Texas-troubadour    Radney Foster. Mr. Americana Jim Lauderdale will host the competition and Mark Bumgarner will return as emcee for    the finalist contest taking place at MerleFest’s Austin Stage on Friday,    April 26th at 2:00 p.m.

This year’s    Chris Austin Songwriting Competition Finalists each fall into one of four    categories:

Bluegrass:

Wyatt Espalin (Hiawassee, Ga.):    “Light Coming Through”

Anya Hinkle (Asheville): “Ballad Of Zona Abston”

James Woolsey (Petersburg,    Ind.) and David Foster (Petersburg,     IN): “Sugar Ridge Road”

Country:

Hannah Kaminer (Asheville): “Don’t Open Your Heart”

Andrew Millsaps (Ararat): “Ain’t No Genie (In    A Bottle Of Jack)”

Shannon Wurst (Fayetteville, Ark.):    “Better Than Bourbon”

General:

Wright Gatewood (Chicago, Ill.):    “First”

Alexa Rose (Asheville): “Medicine For Living”

Bryan Elijah Smith (Dayton, Va.):    “In Through The Dark”

Gospel/Inspirational:

Ashleigh Caudill (Nashville, Tenn.)    and Jon Weisberger (Cottontown, Tenn.):    “Walkin’ Into Gloryland”

Kevin T. Hale (Brentwood, Tenn.):    “We All Die To Live Again”

Russ Parrish (Burnsville,    Minn.) and Topher King (Savage, Minn.): “Washed By The Water”

All three    finalists in each category will have the chance to perform their songs for    the judges on MerleFest’s Austin Stage before category winners are    ultimately decided on Friday.

Net proceeds    from the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest support the Wilkes Community    College Chris Austin Memorial Scholarship. Since its inception, the    scholarship has been awarded to 91 deserving students.

Tickets for    this year’s festival, backstage tours, as well as the Late Night Jam    sponsored by The Bluegrass    Situation, may be purchased at www.MerleFest.org or by calling 1-800-343-7857. MerleFest offers a    three-tiered pricing structure and encourages fans to take advantage of the    extended early bird discount. Early Bird Tier 2 tickets will be    available through April 24th. Remaining tickets will be sold at the gate    during the festival. Headliners    include The Avett Brothers, Brandi Carlile, Amos Lee, Wynonna & the Big    Noise, Del McCoury Band, Dailey & Vincent, Tyler Childers, Keb’ Mo’,    Sam Bush, The Earls of Leicester, and Peter Rowan and The Free Mexican Air    Force. The Late Night Jam sponsored by The Bluegrass Situation    will be hosted by Chatham County Line. In addition to the above-mentioned    artists, the following will be performing at MerleFest ‘19:

American    Aquarium, Andy May, Ana Egge & The Sentimentals, Ashley Heath and Her    Heathens, AZTEC SUN, Banknotes, Bob Hill, Cane Mill Road, Carol Rifkin,    Carolina Blue, Casey Kristofferson Band, Catfish Keith, Charles Welch,    Chris Rodrigues with Abby the Spoonlady, David LaMotte, Dirk Powell Band,    Donna the Buffalo, Driftwood, Elephant Sessions, Elizabeth Cook, Ellis    Dyson & The Shambles, Gordie MacKeeman & His Rhythm Boys, Happy    Traum, Irish Mythen, Jack Lawrence, Jeff Little Trio, Jim Avett, Jim    Lauderdale, Joe Smothers, Jontavious Willis and Andrew Alli, Josh Goforth,    Junior Brown, Junior Sisk, Larry Stephenson Band, Laura Boosinger, Lindi    Ortega, Mark Bumgarner, Mark & Maggie O’Connor, Maybe April, Michaela    Anne, Mile Twelve, The Milk Carton Kids, Mitch Greenhill and String    Madness, Molly Tuttle, Nixon, Blevins, & Gage, Pete & Joan Wernick    and FLEXIGRASS, Presley Barker, Professor Whizzpop!, Radney Foster, Roy    Book Binder, Salt & Light, Scythian, Sean McConnell, Shane Hennessy, Si    Kahn & The Looping Brothers, Steep Canyon Rangers, Steve Poltz, T.    Michael Coleman, The Black Lillies, The Brother Brothers, The Gibson    Brothers, The Harris Brothers, The InterACTive Theatre of Jeff, The Kruger    Brothers, The Local Boys, The Trailblazers, The Waybacks, Todd Albright,    Tom Feldmann, Tony Williamson, Uncle Joe and The Shady Rest, Valerie Smith    & Liberty Pike, Wayne Henderson, Webb Wilder, and Yarn. The lineup and performance    schedules are accessible viaMerleFest.org/lineup.

MerleFest is    pleased to partner with Come    Hear NC, a promotional campaign of the North Carolina Department of    Natural & Cultural Resources and the North Carolina Arts Council, to    celebrate 2019 as “The Year of Music,” a designation Governor Roy Cooper announced in November    of last year. MerleFest, honoring its locale, has programmed over 40    artists who currently call North      Carolina home, each artist representing a    different aspect of the state’s great musical history. Come Hear NC was    designed to celebrate North Carolinians’ groundbreaking contributions to    many of America’s most important musical genres — blues, bluegrass, jazz,    country, gospel, Americana, rock and everything in-between. It’s fitting    then, with 2019 as “The Year of Music,” that the Steep Canyon Rangers, also    proud North Carolinians, would debut their    North Carolina Songbook set at MerleFest.

About MerleFest:

MerleFest was    founded in 1988 in memory of the son of the late American music legend Doc    Watson, renowned guitarist Eddy Merle Watson. MerleFest is a celebration of    "traditional plus" music, a unique mix of traditional,    roots-oriented sounds of the Appalachian region, including old-time,    classic country, bluegrass, folk and gospel and blues, and expanded to    include Americana, classic rock and many other styles. The festival hosts a    diverse mix of artists on its 13 stages during the course of the four-day    event. MerleFest has become the primary fundraiser for the WCC Foundation,    funding scholarships, capital projects and other educational needs.

About Window World:

Window World,    headquartered in North Wilkesboro, N.C., is America’s largest replacement    window and exterior remodeling company, with more than 200 locally owned    offices nationwide. Founded in 1995, the company sells and installs    windows, siding, doors and other exterior products, with over 15 million    windows sold to date. Window World is an ENERGY STAR partner and its    windows, vinyl siding and Therma-Tru doors have all earned the Good    Housekeeping Seal. Through its charitable foundation, Window World Cares, the Window World family provides funding for St. Jude    Children’s Research Hospital, which honored the foundation with its    Organizational Support Award in 2017. Since its inception in 2008, the    foundation has raised over $8 million for St. Jude. Window World also    supports the Veterans Airlift Command, a nonprofit organization that    facilitates free air transportation to wounded veterans and their families.    Window World has flown over 100 missions and surpassed $1 million in    flights and in-kind donations since it began its partnership with the VAC    in 2008. For more information, visit www.WindowWorld.com or call 1-800 NEXTWINDOW. For home improvement and    energy efficiency tips, décor ideas and more, follow Window World on Facebookand Twitter.

About the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural    Resources:

The N.C.    Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (NCDNCR) is the state agency    with a vision to be the leader in using the state's natural and cultural    resources to build the social, cultural, educational and economic future of    North Carolina.    NCDNCR's mission is to improve the quality of life in our state by creating    opportunities to experience excellence in the arts, history, libraries and    nature in North Carolina by stimulating learning, inspiring creativity,    preserving the state's history, conserving the state's natural heritage,    encouraging recreation and cultural tourism, and promoting economic    development.

NCDNCR includes    27 historic sites, seven history museums, two art museums, two science    museums, three aquariums and Jennette's Pier, 39 state parks and recreation    areas, the N.C. Zoo, the nation's first state-supported Symphony Orchestra,    the State Library, the State Archives, the N.C. Arts Council, State    Preservation Office and the Office of State Archaeology, along with the    Division of Land and Water Stewardship. For more information, please call    (919) 807-7300 or visit www.ncdcr.gov.

About the North Carolina    Arts Council

The North    Carolina Arts Council builds on our state’s long-standing love of the arts,    leading the way to a more vibrant future. The Arts Council is an economic    catalyst, fueling a thriving nonprofit creative sector that generates $2.12    billion in annual direct economic activity. The Arts Council also sustains    diverse arts expression and traditions while investing in innovative    approaches to art-making. The North Carolina Arts Council has proven to be    a champion for youth by cultivating tomorrow’s creative citizens through    arts education. http://www.NCArts.org

 For more information, visit www.MerleFest.org.

[nldradio]

Born in Dayton Ohio and raised on funk, jazz and classical styles, Mr Holbrook has truly found his voice as an artist over the past few years. He has perfected his raspy, steeped in the blues, poured from a folk singers tea pot, brand of gritty Blues/Soul that is both infectiously catchy and dirty.

Mr. Holbrook played with DeRobert and the Half Truths opening up for Gary Clark Jr. and the Foo Fighters for Austin City Limits (October 2014) and performed with D Ryan Band for a World Ventures event in Las Vegas for a crowd of 8,000 (2012). Al was recently featured as Blues Man in the Steven Tyler "Love is Your Name" video (2015).

He has played with Royal Southern Brotherhood Artist Bart Walker onboard Norwegian Epic, as well as electrifying crowds in Fat Cats Lounge on the Epic (2013). More recently he was a key member of BB King All Star Band onboard Holland America - the band was ranked number one in the fleet for the duration (2016). 

Holbrook held a permanent Resident Artist position at Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar, Nashville, TN (2013 to 2017) as well as several month long stints at Columbia City Bourbon Bar (2016,2017) and has played live shows in Amsterdam (2016) Sydney (2017) Reykjavik (2017,2018) Sweden (2018) . Currently residing in Los Angeles and playing multiple venues in the Area. Cinema Bar, The Mint, Arcadia Blues Club, Temecula Blues Club, Ojai and Deer Lodge to name a few.

Previously Al worked as the Music Director for Unity of Murfreesboro - directed, led and facilitated all music (covers and originals) for music services and programming (2013-2014) and Music Director for Agape Global heart - directed choir and music programming.

Additional events and performances include: University of Dayton ARTstreet One World Music Festival (2014); Assistant Music Director for contemporary Dance company SMAG's production of SMAGmere (2012); performed at the Miami Valley Music Fest, Ohio (2012); and opened for 50 cents G-Unit as a Hip Hop Act (2007).

Hobrook is a versatile Songwriter/pianist/vocalist currently in the works producing his 5th Studio recording. “Thrive”. Stylistically Al Holbrook is a combination of music of the past and music of today. Soulful, Blues basedWith accents of current urban genres. Al is a thought provoking lyricist and storyteller who’s performance is full of energy and captivity to every audience.

https://www.facebook.com/TheAlHolbrookBand/

https://www.instagram.com/alholbrookmusic/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4jS335KngMe4vz56qcAs2u

#AlHolbrookMusic #AlHolbrook #AlHolbrookBand

Contact

Al@AlHolbrook.com

385.309.0069

[atxdigitalphotography]

Austin Area Jazz Festival 2019 By Michael Lewis | ATX Digital Media | Austin, Texas The 2019 Austin Area Jazz Festival (AAJF) had an intimate evening of great jazz entertainment featuring Grammy Award winner and Jazz Saxophonist Kirk Whalum, Jazz/Funk Trumpeter Tom Browne and Jazz Saxophonist Mike Hamilton on Friday, November 29, at the Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex. Whalum said he was excited to be back in Austin. Brown had the audience dancing in the aisles when he performed his popular hit, “Funkin for Jamaica.” Brown and Hamilton performed together on stage. If you missed this year’s AAJF, be sure to stay tuned for next year. © 2019 Michael Lewis Global Photography, All Rights Reserved Austin Area Jazz Festival (at Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6Fj0TYFTEB/?igshid=ksua90bwizo7

[brajeshupadhyay]

Closed due to coronavirus: List of activities and state shutdowns over COVID-19 outbreak concerns

The novel coronavirus continues to spread in the U.S. Cities and states are restricting large gatherings of people, and even presidential hopefuls are canceling rallies. Here is a list of events and destinations that have been affected by the outbreak.

City and State restrictions

Massachusetts

On Sunday, Governor Charlie Baker has banned gatherings of 25 people or more. Restaurants are to be take-out only through April 17.

New York, Connecticut and New Jersey

Governors Cuomo (NY), Lamont (CT) and Murphy (NJ) announced their respective states will be shutting down all movie theaters, gyms and casinos temporarily. All restaurants and bars are restricted to take-out only.

Sporting Events and Leagues

NBA

The NBA has abruptly suspended its season “until further notice.” The decision came after a Utah Jazz player tested positive for COVID-19 ahead of Utah’s game against the Oklahoma City Thunder. That game was immediately canceled.

At the time the NBA decided to suspend the season, a plan was not yet in place for when the league would resume.

PGA Golf 

The PGA Tour canceled the Players Championship after the first round and all tournaments until the Masters.

The Masters Tournament has been postponed, the chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club announced on Friday. Fred Ridley, Chairman of Augusta National Golf Club, said the Masters will  now take place “at some later date.”

NHL 

The NHL announced it is pausing the 2019-20 season, effective immediately. Commissioner Gary Bettman said the league will try to resume games “as soon as it is appropriate and prudent,” and is hopeful the stoppage will not affect the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball delayed the start of its regular season until May at the earliest. The league said in a statement on March 16 the move was made in accordance with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention against gatherings of 50 people or more for eight weeks.

Major League Soccer

The MLS season has been put on hold. Only two games into the season, the league announced it is suspending play for 30 days. 

U.S. Soccer

The United States Soccer Federation announced it would cancel upcoming men’s and women’s national team matches in March and April. The statement said the majority of the Youth National Team and Extended National Team camps that were planned through the end of April would also be canceled. 

NCAA Basketball Tournament

The NCAA has canceled the 2020 Division I men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. 

XFL football

The XFL has suspended play, effective immediately. Prior to the announcement, the new football league said the March 15 game between the Los Angeles Wildcats and the Seattle Dragons would take place without fans. 

Tennis: ATP and WTA tours

Thursday, the Association of Tennis Professionals and the Women’s Tennis Association, the governing bodies for both men’s and women’s professional tennis respectively, announced they are both suspending ongoing tennis tours due to health concerns over COVID-19. The ATP has declared a six-week suspension of play, meaning no tournaments will be held up to the week of April 20.

International Soccer

England: Premier League

The English Premier League has postponed its season until at least April 4. The decision was reached after the league called an emergency meeting. The league had previously postponed the Manchester City vs. Arsenal match after Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta tested positive for coronavirus. 

Several Premier League players have also tested positive for the virus. USMNT midfielder Christian Pulisic and his Chelsea teammates are in self-quarantine after a teammate tested positive. Several players from Leicester City and Manchester City have also tested positive.

CBS Sports reports there is a possibility that the Premier League 2019-20 season may not be completed. Greg Clarke, chairman of the Football Association which regulates the sport in England reportedly said he does not think it’s “feasible” the season will be completed. 

Spain: La Liga

In Spain, all La Liga soccer matches have been suspended for the next two matchdays. 

Italy: Seria A

Italy’s top soccer league Serie A played several matches “behind closed doors” in empty stadiums. But the country has now suspended all sporting events until April 3 at the earliest. 

A defender for top club Juventus has tested positive for the virus.

France: Ligue 1, Ligue 2

France’s Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 have suspended all matches until further notice. Prior to Friday morning’s announcement, the top French soccer leagues had been playing all matches in empty stadiums, a plan they had intended to see through April 15. 

Germany: Bundesliga

Germany’s Bundesliga teams will also play their matches in empty stadiums this weekend. No plans have been announced to suspend play at this time.

Bundesliga club Paderborn announced that coach Steffen Baumgart is being tested for the virus and second division club Hannover 96 has two players in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19.

UEFA Champions League and Europa League

UEFA, the European governing body for soccer, postponed of Europe’s two largest soccer tournaments. Both the Champions League and Europa League competitions are being postponed due to the spread of the coronavirus. 

The Champions League round of 16 was set to finish next week and quarterfinals slated to begin on April 7. After the announcement, it is now unclear when play will resume.

Auto Racing

The opening race of the Formula 1 racing season has been canceled. The Australian Grand Prix has also been canceled, race organizers announced. 

The NHRA announced Gatornationals, the annual drag racing event, was also canceled. The news comes after a member of the McLaren Racing Team tested positive for COVID-19, the statement said. 

NASCAR announced they would postpone race events at Atlanta Motor Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway over the next two weeks. NASCAR had originally announced it would race without fans in attendance and only drivers, crews and other necessary personnel, but have now reversed that decision.

Music Festivals

Coachella and Stagecoach

Organizers of the annual music festival have pushed it back by six months at the direction of health authorities. Goldenvoice announced the rescheduling of the 2020 music festival.

Coachella will now take place over two weekends in October: October 9 to 11 and October 16 to 18. Stagecoach, which highlights country music, will take place on October 23 to 25.

Following the announcement, headliners Dan + Shay took to Twitter to announce that they would not be able to make the rescheduled dates due to their planned tour. 

Coachella draws up to a quarter-million people to Indio, California, every year. This year’s lineup is set to include Frank Ocean, Rage Against the Machine, Travis Scott, Lana Del Rey and Thom Yorke.

South by Southwest

Austin mayor Steve Adler canceled South by Southwest, the preeminent film, music and media conference that was set to begin in one week. The move comes after weeks of public pressure, during which the conference lost major attendees including Facebook, Twitter, Intel, Mashable, Netflix, Amazon and TikTok. More than 50,000 people had petitioned for the event to be called off.

“There was no acceptable path forward that would mitigate the risk to our community,” said Dr. Mark Escott, Austin’s interim health authority. He noted that the number of visitors attending SXSW and their many geographic origins would have created a crisis situation.

No cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Travis County, which houses Austin, Escott said. There are at least six cases in the Houston area, the Associated Press reports.

Ultra Music Festival

Miami’s Ultra Music Festival, which was scheduled to take place March 20 to 22, has been called off until next year, the Miami Herald reported.

Tin Pan South Songwriting Festival

The annual songwriting festival featuring both amateur and professional composers has been canceled. Tin Pan South Songwriting Festival organizers cited both the recent deadly tornado as well as coronavirus concerns. 

Met Gala 2020 Postponed

This year’s Met Gala has been officially postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the event’s co-chair Anna Wintour confirmed on Monday.

Movies and Theater

Broadway shows canceled

Broadway is going dark due to coronavirus concerns as New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced gatherings with 500 people or more are no longer permitted in the Empire State. While the New York ban was set to go into effect Friday at 5 p.m., the Broadway shows shutdown began at 5 p.m. Thursday and will run through April 12.

Tribeca Film Festival postponed

In a statement Thursday, Tribeca Film Festival announced postponement based on Governor Cuomo’s announcement. The festival was supposed to take place April 15 – 26, co-founder Jane Rosenthal said on the festival group’s website.

CinemaCon

The National Association of Theatre Owners canceled CinemaCon 2020, originally scheduled for March 30 – April 2 in Las Vegas, the organizers said in a statement posted. The convention features distributors and exhibitors presenting upcoming films as a preview for the summer movie season.

Movie releases delayed

Sony, Paramount, STX, Disney, and Universal have all delayed the release of several feature films. Some of the movies include F9, No Time to Die, Lovebirds, Mulan, The New Mutants, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, A Quiet Place Part II, and Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway.

Concert Tours

Pearl Jam

Individual musicians are also calling off their tours. Pearl Jam has pushed back the North American leg of its tour, which was scheduled to start March 13 in Toronto. (Shows in Germany are still scheduled to proceed, starting June 23.) 

Avril Lavigne

Pop singer Avril Lavigne has canceled multiple tour dates throughout Europe in March and April. She took to Twitter to tell her fans “You’re in my thoughts and prayers and we are hoping to announce rescheduled shows soon.” 

Green Day

American pop-punk band Green Day postponed their “Hella Mega” tour dates in Asia “due to the health + travel concerns with coronavirus,” the group said on Twitter. “We know it sucks, as we were looking forward to seeing you all, but hold on to your tickets we’ll be announcing the new dates very soon.”

Blake Shelton

The country singer’s “Friends and Heroes” tour dates from March 12 to March 21 have been postponed and will be rescheduled.

K-Pop: BTS, Taeyeon and NCT

K-pop group BTS, one of the most popular boy bands in the world, canceled April tour dates in Seoul citing concerns about the coronavirus. Instead of starting its world tour in Seoul, the band will hold its first show in Santa Clara, California, later in April. Fellow singers Taeyeon and NCT also dropped planned shows for Singapore.

Public Events

Boston Marathon postponed

The Boston Marathon, scheduled for April 20, was also postponed.  The marathon has been rescheduled for September 14.

White House Easter Egg Roll

The White House has called off this year’s Easter Egg Roll as public health officials across the country implement new measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus. The annual event, which takes place on the South Lawn, was scheduled to take place April 13, but was canceled “out of an abundance of caution,” the White House said.

Vacation Destinations

Disney resorts in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo

The Tokyo Disney resort said this week it would close until March 15 due to the coronavirus outbreak. Disney theme parks in Shanghai have been closed since January 24 and Hong Kong Disney attractions since January 25.

Disneyland – Anaheim, California

Disneyland was granted an exception from the state of California advisory to postpone or cancel all gatherings of 250 people or more. After initially deciding to stay open, Disneyland announced it would shut down for the remainder of March. This is only the fourth time in history the California park has closed. 

Officials said that Disney’s three hotels at Disneyland — the Disneyland Hotel, Paradise Pier and the Grand Californian — will remain open until Monday, March 16 to give current guests enough time to make travel arrangements.

Disney World – Orlando, Florida

A few hours after announcing Disneyland’s closing, Disney announced that the theme parks at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, and the Disneyland Paris Resort will close starting at the close of business on March 15. Disney Cruise Line will suspend all new departures beginning March 14. 

On its website, Disney World says those with tickets for days the park is closed will be extended to use any date through December 15, 2020, and annual passes will be extended by the number of days the parks are closed, March 16, 2020, through March 31, 2020.

Universal Studios – Orlando and Hollywood

CBS Miami reports that Universal Orlando will be closing its two parks and water park. The closures will last until the end of March. However, the company said Universal’s hotels and CityWalk will remain open.

Universal Studios Hollywood also announced they would be closed to the public, according to CBS Los Angeles.

SeaWorld closing

SeaWorld announced they are temporarily closing all our theme parks through the end of March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Technology conferences

E3 2020

E3, the world’s biggest gaming convention, has been called off, CNET reported. The Entertainment Software Association, which organizes the annual event, said E3 will return in 2021, according to GameSpot. The convention is a spotlight for major game companies to showcase their new products for the year. Last year, 66,000 people attended.

Microsoft and Ubisoft will showcase their games online instead.

“After careful consultation with our member companies regarding the health and safety of everyone in our industry — our fans, our employees, our exhibitors and our longtime E3 partners — we have made the difficult decision to cancel E3 2020, scheduled for June 9 to 11 in Los Angeles,” the Entertainment Software Association said in a statement. 

Facebook Global Marketing Summit and F8 conference

Facebook canceled its annual marketing summit scheduled for early March, which was expected to draw 4,000 people. Additionally, their annual F8 developers conference – scheduled for May 5 and 6 – has also been canceled. Facebook called off the “in-person component” of its F8 developer conference, the company’s biggest annual event, which typically brings thousands of software engineers to Silicon Valley. Facebook said it would replace the event with “locally hosted events, videos and live-streamed content.” 

Google I/O and Cloud Next conferences

Google announced that it has canceled its annual developers conference scheduled for May 12 to 14. The announcement came after the search giant had announced the cancellation of both its annual Cloud Next conference and Google News Initiative Summit, opting for a virtual cloud conference instead.

Google News Initiative

Google called off its annual news conference, which would have brought together several hundred media-industry attendees in Sunnyvale, California, in late April. “We regret that we have to cancel our global Google News Initiative summit but the health and wellbeing of our guests is our number one priority,” Richard Gingras, vice president of news, said in a statement.

Mobile World Congress

The MWC, the world’s largest technology trade show, typically attracts some 100,000 people from around the world to Barcelona every February. But the conference organizers called off this year’s event after high-profile attendees including Facebook and LG pulled out.

“The global concern regarding the coronavirus outbreak, travel concern and other circumstances make it impossible for the GSMA to hold the event,” the organization said in a statement on February 12. The show has been an annual event since 2006.

Games Developer Conference

After Gearbox, Blizzard Entertainment, and other big developers announced they would not attend Games Developer Conference in March, the conference was postponed. Organizers say that GDC will still happen in summer 2020, but it is unclear whether the developers that have dropped out will still attend at a later time this year. 

Other conferences and conventions

Adobe Summit

Adobe canceled the in-person version of its eponymous Summit, scheduled for March 29 to April 2 in Las Vegas, the AP reported. More than 20,000 people were expected to attend the conference, which will be held as an “online experience” this year, according to the AP.

Cold Spring Harbor

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has called off all conferences and meetings set to take place on its campus on New York’s Long Island for the coming month. “CSHL has canceled or postponed all upcoming scientific conferences and courses bringing participants to campus through April 5th, and will reevaluate future offerings on a rolling basis,” the lab said in a statement. The move affects at least four courses set to take place in that time period.

Real estate conferences

The National Association of Realtors canceled two West Coast conferences this week: the Joint AE Institute, which was to take place March 13 to 16 in San Diego, and the Realtor Broker Summit, scheduled for March 31 to April 1 in Los Angeles. The group said it is “considering alternatives” and could reschedule, relocate or redesign both conferences later in the year. 

WonderCon 2020

Comic-Con International’s upcoming WonderCon convention, originally scheduled for April 1 through April 12, has been postponed until a later date. In a statement, organizers cited a California Department of Public Health recommendation that gatherings and events of more than 250 people should either be postponed or canceled. 

The fate of San Diego Comic-Con, the largest comic book convention, has not yet been decided. It is currently scheduled to take place July 23 to 26. 

World Bank, International Monetary Fund 

The 189-nation International Monetary Fund and its sister lending organization, the World Bank, announced that they will replace their regular spring meetings in Washington with a “virtual format,” the Associated Press reported.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and World Bank President David Malpass issued a joint statement saying their decision was driven by “growing health concerns related to the virus.” Separately, the World Bank has said it would make up to $12 billion available globally to boost countries’ response to the coronavirus, the Financial Times reported.

The two global lending organizations typically hold a spring meeting in Washington, where they both have their headquarters. This year’s meeting had been scheduled for the week of April 13.

Houston energy conference CERAWeek 2020

A major energy conference in Houston has been called off. IHS Markit has canceled CERAWeek 2020, an annual energy conference that was set to attract delegates from more than 80 countries to Houston starting March 9.

“We do this with deep disappointment,” the organizers said in a statement, adding that their top priority was the health and safety of conference participants.

“We have spent the last several weeks focused on this question, established a medical partnership with Houston Methodist Hospital, have been in continuing dialogue with experts on infectious disease, and established an extensive protocol. But the spread of COVID-19 is moving quickly around the world,” the organizers added.

ASEAN summit

The Trump administration postponed a March 14 summit with the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. President Trump invited ASEAN leaders to a meeting in Las Vegas after he did not attend a November summit with the group in Bangkok, Reuters reported.

Geneva International Auto Show

The annual Geneva International Motor Show was canceled as the Swiss government put an immediate ban on all public and private events involving more than 1,000 people, CNET reported. The ban is expected to last until at least March 15.

“We are aware that this measure will have a significant impact on public life,” said Switzerland’s interior minister, Alain Berset.

The event, originally slated to kick off March 5, was expected to generate up to 250 million Swiss francs (or $257 million) in spending, according to the AP.

Switzerland has reported 15 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus. It borders northern Italy, which has seen the largest cluster of cases in Europe. Other affected events include the traditional Carnival procession in Basel, a ski marathon and several soccer matches, according to the AP.

Alex Sundby contributed reporting.

Exhibitors have to dismantle their displays after cancellation of the Geneva Auto Show on February 28 in Geneva, Switzerland. Hundreds of coronavirus cases have been confirmed in nearby northern Italy and smaller numbers are being confirmed daily across western Europe.

Robert Hradil / Getty Images

The post Closed due to coronavirus: List of activities and state shutdowns over COVID-19 outbreak concerns appeared first on Shri Times.

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[jazzworldquest-blog]

USA: #JAZZ "Transitions," New CD from the Marcus Shelby Orchestra, Set for June 7 Release by MSO Records

                                                                     Marcus Shelby

Places Suite Exploring Negro League Baseball

At the Heart of "Transitions,"

Set for June 7 Release by MSO Records

Bassist-Composer-Bandleader's Latest  

Features Four-Part Suite,  

Seven Standards Performed by His 15-Piece Big Band,

Special Guests Mads Tolling & Tiffany Austin

Performances as Resident Artistic Director

At SFJAZZ, 5/23-26

        April 26, 2019

Bassist, composer, and bandleader Marcus Shelby brings together three of his greatest passions -- African-American history, baseball, and big-band jazz -- on Transitions, the latest work by his 15-piece Marcus Shelby Orchestra, set for a June 7 release on his own MSO Records. While the album offers Shelby's lush arrangements of classic tunes by Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, and Cole Porter, its centerpiece "Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues" is an original four-part suite inspired by the history of Negro League Baseball. It also features superb work by two special guests, violinist Mads Tolling and acclaimed vocalist Tiffany Austin.

Shelby's work to date has established his penchant for deep musical dives into African-American history and culture. Transitions is not a full-length opus like his 2007 oratorio Harriet Tubman or 2011's Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but it is unquestionably on the same ambitious path as those two works. It's also a natural choice of subject matter for San Francisco-based Shelby, a self-described baseball aficionado who (when he's not on the bandstand) can often be found cheering on his beloved San Francisco Giants.

"I did a whole theatrical project that premiered last September at the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival," he explains. "It re-created the environment of a Negro League baseball park. This suite was inspired by the research I did for that project. But it's more about these four cities -- Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago, Kansas City -- that were very central to the Negro Leagues."

    Those were also central to the development of jazz, and Shelby's pieces reflect the parts they played in that development. The suite's opening "Transition 1 (Pittsburgh)," a nod to two powerhouse teams (the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays), also reflects the city's blues tradition and the hard swing generated by native-son drummers from Art Blakey to Jeff "Tain" Watts. Its finale, "Black Ball Swing (Kansas City)," celebrates the Kansas City Monarchs -- "the best known, most respected team of all time in the Negro Leagues," Shelby says -- with both the riff-driven style of the Count Basie Orchestra and the supercharged bebop of Charlie Parker, both Kansas City exports.

Transitions also includes one composition each by Charles Mingus and George Shearing, along with two by Cole Porter and three by the grand master of big band writing, Duke Ellington. It's "an album that mirrors a live performance," he says. "It's like seeing one of our concerts. It felt good to break away from doing programmatic music to playing some straight-up blues and swing and standards." The Duke's gorgeous but rarely played "On a Turquoise Cloud" is a feature for guest violinist Tolling, while his "Mood Indigo"and "Solitude," along with Shearing's "Lullaby of Birdland"and the two Porter tunes, are vehicles for Tiffany Austin's vocals.

   Marcus Shelby was born February 2, 1966 in Anchorage, Alaska, moving to Sacramento, California at the age of five. He played the bass as a teenager, but his real passion was for baseball and basketball, earning a college scholarship in the latter. At 22, however, a concert by the Wynton Marsalis Quartet reignited his love of music, and he returned to school at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, where he studied with Charlie Haden and James Newton.

First gaining attention in Los Angeles as a cofounder (with drummer Willie Jones III) of the hard-bop band Black/Note in the early 1990s, Shelby relocated to San Francisco in 1996. He quickly established himself as an essential creative force on the Bay Area arts scene, leading both the Marcus Shelby Trio and the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra and earning increasingly prestigious commissions from dance companies, theatrical productions, and presenters.

Shelby opened a new chapter with the release of 2006's Port Chicago (Noir), a major orchestral work inspired by the World War II incident that saw 50 young black seamen convicted in the largest mutiny trial in U.S. naval history. Since then he's focused his creative energy on a series of meticulously researched, hard-swinging works exploring African American history, like 2007's Harriet Tubman (Noir) and 2011's Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Porto Franco).

Marcus Shelby will perform as Resident Artistic Director at SFJAZZ, 201 Franklin St, San Francisco, Thursday 5/23 through Sunday 5/26. The four-night run will feature the artist in collaborations literary (with Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket), political (with Angela Davis), and Ellingtonian (with Faye Carol, Kenny Washington, and Mads Tolling), along with an evening dedicated to the performance of "Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues." 

  Remember Rockefeller at Attica - Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra

    Web Site: marcusshelby.com 

        Media Contact:

Terri Hinte 510-234-8781 hudba@sbcglobal.net terrihinte.com  

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[nldradio]

Born in Dayton Ohio and raised on funk, jazz and classical styles, Mr Holbrook has truly found his voice as an artist over the past few years. He has perfected his raspy, steeped in the blues, poured from a folk singers tea pot, brand of gritty Blues/Soul that is both infectiously catchy and dirty.

Mr. Holbrook played with DeRobert and the Half Truths opening up for Gary Clark Jr. and the Foo Fighters for Austin City Limits (October 2014) and performed with D Ryan Band for a World Ventures event in Las Vegas for a crowd of 8,000 (2012). Al was recently featured as Blues Man in the Steven Tyler "Love is Your Name" video (2015).

He has played with Royal Southern Brotherhood Artist Bart Walker onboard Norwegian Epic, as well as electrifying crowds in Fat Cats Lounge on the Epic (2013). More recently he was a key member of BB King All Star Band onboard Holland America - the band was ranked number one in the fleet for the duration (2016). 

Holbrook held a permanent Resident Artist position at Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar, Nashville, TN (2013 to 2017) as well as several month long stints at Columbia City Bourbon Bar (2016,2017) and has played live shows in Amsterdam (2016) Sydney (2017) Reykjavik (2017,2018) Sweden (2018) . Currently residing in Los Angeles and playing multiple venues in the Area. Cinema Bar, The Mint, Arcadia Blues Club, Temecula Blues Club, Ojai and Deer Lodge to name a few.

Previously Al worked as the Music Director for Unity of Murfreesboro - directed, led and facilitated all music (covers and originals) for music services and programming (2013-2014) and Music Director for Agape Global heart - directed choir and music programming.

Additional events and performances include: University of Dayton ARTstreet One World Music Festival (2014); Assistant Music Director for contemporary Dance company SMAG's production of SMAGmere (2012); performed at the Miami Valley Music Fest, Ohio (2012); and opened for 50 cents G-Unit as a Hip Hop Act (2007).

Hobrook is a versatile Songwriter/pianist/vocalist currently in the works producing his 5th Studio recording. “Thrive”. Stylistically Al Holbrook is a combination of music of the past and music of today. Soulful, Blues basedWith accents of current urban genres. Al is a thought provoking lyricist and storyteller who’s performance is full of energy and captivity to every audience.

https://www.facebook.com/TheAlHolbrookBand/

https://www.instagram.com/alholbrookmusic/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4jS335KngMe4vz56qcAs2u

#AlHolbrookMusic #AlHolbrook #AlHolbrookBand

Contact

Al@AlHolbrook.com

385.309.0069