And Bring Good Cheer To Our Isolated Audiences in December!
Bread & Roses is sponsoring a holiday sing-along for several of our facility audiences with a chorus of volunteer singers co-led by singers Claudia Russell and Marian Hubler.
Anyone who enjoys singing holiday songs is welcome to participate. Each program will be approximately 45 minutes to an hour. If you interested in being part of the group, you can do one show or all, which will be held in the East Bay, San Francisco and Marin.
With red, white and blue balloons bobbing cheerfully in the breeze, the band Moonalice played an upbeat Bread & Roses concert for the veterans at the VA Hospital in Menlo Park on Labor Day 2011. Blessed with beautiful sunny weather, this early afternoon special event was held on Monday, September 5 on a small stage in a grassy area to the right of the front door of the Community Living Center.
Our audience was a mix of veterans -- most from World War II who lived in the nursing unit close by and enjoyed the performance from a covered deck. They were assisted by other vets from the Vietnam era who came from a residential rehab program in a nearby building.
Photo: Moonalice performing a Bread & Roses show at Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco.
A band of seasoned musicians, Moonalice features Roger McNamee on rhythm guitar, bass and vocals; Ann McNamee on keyboards and vocals; Pete Sears on keyboards, guitar, vocals and bass; Barry Sless on lead, pedal steel and bass guitars; and John Molo on drums and vocals.
Pete Sears launched the set with "Down the Road", a crowd pleaser and apt metaphor for this traveling band that goes all over the country playing outdoor festivals and parks as a living embodiment of their belief that music is a communal experience that should be shared.
OIGC Director, Terrance Kelly takes a turn at the microphone.
Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir -- their name says it all. Buddhists, Christians, Jews and others join their voices to sing traditional and contemporary Black Gospel music. Many races and ethnicities blend into one beautiful chorus. Residents of Crossroads Homeless Shelter in Oakland were engulfed by the powerful sound that filled their dining hall during a recent Bread & Roses concert there. Some laughed, some cried as songs of trials and faith touched their hearts. “Never Alone,” “All I Need,” and upon request “Amazing Grace” buoyed the spirits of folks facing a hard time in their lives.
Volunteer host Barb Withers who attended the show wrote, “There was a shared energy in the room and it just kept encircling everyone with love and strength. It was hard to believe how much the music filled the room, and as it did, more and more of the audience stood smiling, clapping and singing to the inspiring music.”
After the show, a young choir member said that she was especially happy to be working with Bread & Roses. She had been inspired by seeing shows while attending a high school for students with special needs. She was now able to give back to the organization that gave to her.
OIGC has been blessing Bread & Roses audiences since 1990, performing regularly in detention centers, rehab facilities and shelters.
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Having written songs recorded by Emmylou Harris and Joe Cocker, Marshall Chapman is very plugged in to the songwriting socket. Her styles range from Alternative Country to Rock 'n Roll, and her intelligent humor pervades all of her writing including her books. While in the Bay Area recently to promote her new book, They Came to Nashville on West Coast Live, she performed her first institutional concert for Bread & Roses.
On June 19, 2011 Marshall shared songs and stories with the men and women working on their sobriety at New Bridge Foundation in Berkeley. "Music and 12-step programs saved my life," she told them. Songs about her life before, during and after recovery (from substance abuse) were met with great enthusiasm and empathy. "Why Can't You Be Like Other Girls" told of how she didn't fit the mold growing up in South Carolina. "Goodbye Forever" chronicled her obsession and difficulty in kicking a bad relationship. And the happy ending song reminded everyone that "It's Never Too Late to Have a Happy Childhood."
Bread & Roses serves people of all ages and backgrounds who are isolated in institutions. Some of them suffer from lapses in memory.We have seen seniors with Alzheimer’s disease, for instance, who may not recognize their grandchildren, but are still able to recall all the lyrics of a song.
Those who know the power that music has to invoke memory will appreciateThe Music Never Stopped, a 2011 Sundance Film Festival pick that examines the relationship between memory, music, and healing. In the film, Gabriel (Lou Taylor Pucci), is reunited with his parents, Henry (J.K. Simmons) and Helen Sawyer (Cara Seymour), when he turns up at a hospital in New York in 1986 with a large, yet benign brain tumor that has severely damaged his memory.The past, present and future are virtually indistinguishable for him and he is incapable of interacting with those around him, including his parents, from whom he’s been estranged for 20 years.
When medicine and traditional therapy fail to help Gabriel regain his memory, Henry contacts a music therapist, Dianne Daley (Julia Ormond), who discovers that when Gabriel listens to the music that he loved as an adolescent, especially the Grateful Dead, he is able to reconnect with the world. We all have a soundtrack to our lives, and somehow that musical memory seems to survive even the most traumatic of brain injuries.
Bread & Roses has served Whistlestop in San Rafael for over five years, bringing concerts to seniors at their special lunchtime events. Their monthly newsletter, the Whistlestop Express, is known as the leading information resource for Marin's active aging movement. The Feb. 2011 issue featured an article by Bread & Roses Executive Director Cassandra Flipper, "Bread & Roses Connects Heart to Heart Through Music."
Bread & Roses recently presented The Christmas Jug Band at Whistlestop
