Another benefit for Joe's

Last night, I performed in another fundraiser event for the new Joe's Movement Emporium, now under construction in Mount Rainier, Maryland. The event was held at Busboys and Poets, which was very nice. Their meeting room / event space is actually a plush little venue - good sound equipment, a baby grand piano, good food and drinks, and a secret not-on-the-menu vegan calzone.

Since the focus of the evening was raising money for the Joe's capital campaign, performances were brief, and varied. Between the holistic belly dancers and the Thai dance troupe, Improv Arts (which is going to be one of the resident organizations at the new Joe's) trotted out members of its music ensemble, the DC Improvisers Collective. Or, in more frank terms, Daniel Burkholder is out of town, so instead of doing our usual "five minute duo improv" dance/music piece that we often bring to these freebie events, I needed to pull something together myself. Happily, Dan Barbiero and Ben Azzara agreed to play with me - even though we were only going to play for five minutes and we weren't getting paid.

We weren't able to schedule rehearsal time together before the show, so we played one of my existing pieces, "shut up and listen." It's originally scored for electric guitar, cello, and laptop. I shared the score and recording with Dan last year, and he made his own version for double bass instead of cello. He did a beautiful job with it, and I really like his take on the piece. Hopefully, we'll have a chance to record it sometime. Ben added hand percussion (bongos, played with hands and brushes) and that worked out really well.

If you're curious, a pdf of the score is online here, and a recording of the guitar/cello version is on my myspace page.

So a big "thank you!" to Ben and Dan for their generosity - and here's hoping we helped raise some money for Joe's...