On July 16 at 7:30 pm on the Jenny Bienemann Music page on Facebook, join us for the next Haiku Milieu show, “Begin with the End in Mind.”
Brand new songs, some your favorite songwriters, and all of us writing our songs, knowing we had to figure out how to put them to video. You should come. Who knows...you may just become part of the collaboration!
Because sometimes, you don't even know you're collaborating.
Flash back to last year, around this time. We were celebrating the release of my book, Haiku Milieu, in May, 2019 at FitzGerald’s. To help celebrate, 15 truly astonishing songwriters wrote a song to a photo and haiku in the book.
In these shows, while the performers take the stage, I introduce them and read the haiku, then they perform the song they wrote to it. That’s it. There's very little talking, so that the haiku and the song lifting off from it, have the best possible chance to be internalized by the audience.
While I figured it should work, I could not have know how well it would work. The songs, somehow, grew together into a genuine storybook of music and image, running the the gamut of style and tone.
To name merely a few: Gerald Dowd brought out his electric guitar. Sue Fink played an omnichord. Deb Lader played a bouzouki. Dave Walker and Joe Fournier improvised with guitar and baritone sax. I played with a full band. The songs could not be more varied, unique, and, well…astonishing. Each in their own way.
These songs have become friends to me, whether I listen to them lying down with my eyes closed, cleaning the house, or in the background while I am at one of my makeshift desks, like the one you see pictured here.
Long and short, what I thought was a one-night concert became so much more than a one-night celebration. It became a collaboration. A love note to and from our community, and a testament to the depth and breadth of songwriting talent in our "milieu."
Of course, I might be biased about all this.
But what if I’m not?
Go ahead, experience it for yourself at this link for the Haiku Milieu YouTube playlist for May, 2019: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLujRH6vCZKP1WP9Ywfq1CFthMOE1RmS4a.
It features songs by Robin Bienemann, Naomi Ashley, Cayne Collier, Steve Dawson, Joe Dempsey, Gerald Dowd, Rachel Drew, Sue Fink, Joe Fournier and David Walker, Jeanne Kuhns, Ron Lazzeretti, Deborah Maris Lader, Last Acre, MMCM, Bruce Roper, Jodi Walker, and Terry White and more.
David Sameshima captured these songs. Mike Janowski edited, then mastered, and uploaded the videos. They all sound so nice and even!
I hope this playlist can be a friend to you, as it is to me.