Beyond Music: Rebecca Martin Tackles Drinking Water, Plastic Pollution and Community Issues.

Rebecca Martin with Riverkeeper’s Captain John Lipscomb at Lock 4 patrolling the Mohawk River, one of the largest tributaries of the Hudson River Photo credit: Dan Shapley

For the past couple of years, Rebecca Martin as an organizer and advocate has split her time between KingstonCitizens.org (as founder and lead organizer), Riverkeeper (where she was promoted to Campaign Manager for the Water Quality Program led by director Dan Shapley) and most recently hired by the formidable Judith Enck, senior advisor at the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. Appointed by President Obama, Enck served as the Regional Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overseeing environmental protection in NY, NJ, eight Indian Nations, Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands. Working with a staff of 800 and managing a $700 million budget, she secured a number of environmental accomplishments during her tenure at the EPA.

Rebecca Martin joins Judith Enck at Beyond Plastics.

Rebecca will join Judith and her team at Beyond Plastics in September, a nationwide project based at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, that pairs the wisdom and experience of environmental policy experts with the energy and creativity of college students to build a vibrant and effective anti-plastics movement. Their mission is to “end plastic pollution by being a catalyst for change at every level of our society. We use our deep policy and advocacy expertise to build a well-informed, effective movement seeking to achieve the institutional, economic, and societal changes needed to save our planet, and ourselves, from the plastic pollution crisis.”

Music in 2020

Rebecca continues to make music, and in January of 2020, she will team up again with Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos (OJM) in Lisbon, Portugal this time to record a set of standards with the bassist Larry Grenadier.

Rebecca Martin performs LUSH LIFE (the arrangement written for her by Guillermo Klein) with OJM.

Martin and Grenadier will also perform a special duo concert at the Wiener Konzerthaus Mozart Hall in Vienna, Austria on January 17th.

To learn more, visit:

www.rebeccamartin.com
www.riverkeeper.org
www.kingstoncitizens.org
www.beyondplastics.org

Once Blue (Rebecca Martin and Jesse Harris) Live at the Handlebar from 1996 Available on iTunes.

 

                           Click on image to purchase on iTunes

 

Once Blue is a bit of a long ago dream. Some 25 years ago I came to New York City from the state of Maine, landing in the Lower Eastside of Manhattan with the songwriter Jesse Harris and a young Ben Street, Kurt Rosenwinkelkel and Jim Black. Later, Kenny Wolleson, Steve Cardenas and Bill Dobrow would join us. It was a vibrant time for songwriting, and a fortunate start for us in the city.

What you are about to hear is a 22 year old recording of a live board mix at the height of our music making. We were a very young band on the road, spending much of our time touring the country to open for popular acts that included Lisa Loeb, Shawn Colvin, Squeeze, Emmylou Harris and others. Rolling into the Handlebar in South Carolina on January 19th, 1996 for our own concert was a refreshing and creative respite.

I was happy to find this performance of our group tucked away in a box for decades. Long before social media, music relied on miles and miles of performances in order to be heard. Although Once Blue was an influential band in New York City in the early 90’s, there isn’t anything available that has captured who we were as a live band which was one of our strengths. I’m pleased to be able to share this with you. It is my wish that you will enjoy our collaboration from long ago.

Rebecca Martin
May, 2018
Kingston, NY

Rebecca Martin with the Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos in Portugal and Spain

 

 

Rebecca Martin’s week as the guest artist with the Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos in Portugal and Spain was a success with great reviews and the possibility of a recording and additional future concert dates.

 

Casa de Musica’s Video Interview of Rebecca Martin and Pedro Guedes

READ:  “Rebecca Martin: A Singer Who Sounds at Home”

 

 

Rebecca Martin honored by Catskill Waters in Woodstock, NY

 

“Catskill Waters, a watershed-related community art project, is holding a fundraiser on October 14 that artist Keiko Sono of Bearsville describes as a hybrid of “a multi-media art project, culinary bliss, and a social and economic experiment.” Expect artworks made of ice, gourmet dishes prepared the former owner of Chanterelle in Manhattan, and unusual in a fundraiser income for participating artists….A four-course dinner will be prepared by David Waltuck, owner of the legendary Chanterelle, which operated in Manhattan from 1979 to 2009. Although it was one of the city’s most expensive restaurants, Chanterelle was famous for the warm welcome Waltuck and his wife gave to guests. The New Yorker journalist Adam Gopnik described his meal there as “a three-hour engineered transcendence of the mundane.” Every six months, a new menu cover would be designed by folks including John Cage, Edward Albee and Francesco Clemente.  Several original menus from the Chanterelle collection will be exhibited. Sono has asked seven local artists to design menu covers, which will be on display and on sale.”

The banquet will honor Rebecca Martin, a founder of KingstonCitizens.org. Through the work of Martin and other activists, the proposal to build a bottling plant using Cooper Lake water was withdrawn.”

VIEW:  Catskill Waters Website for more information.

Rebecca Martin and Guillermo Klein’s THE UPSTATE PROJECT available to pre-order.


PREORDER

The Upstate Project (Release date: April 14, 2017)

VISIT
The Upstate Project’s website for more information

 

The Upstate Project is a landmark collaboration that unites a group of world-class musicians who’ve already distinguished themselves in their individual creative pursuits.

Rebecca Martin is widely recognized as one of her generation’s most talented and versatile vocalists and songwriters, effortlessly bridging the world’s of jazz and songwriting while working alongside some of the music’s most esteemed players.  Argentine-born pianist-vocalist-composer-arranger Guillermo Klein is renowned throughout the jazz world for his inventive, eclectic compositional approach and his distinctive harmonic sensibility.  Their rhythm section is composed of bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard, two of jazz’s most in-demand players.

The four participants’ distinctive talents interact in unexpected and inspiring ways on The Upstate Project, which offers exquisite, gently intoxicating melodies, vivid, haunting lyrics, and effortless instrumental interactions.

Martin’s compositions “On A Sunday Morning,” “To Up and Go” and “Later On They’ll Know” (the latter co-written by Ron Sexsmith) embody the lyrical insight and melodic craft for which she’s become known, while Klein’s “Llorando Fuerte (Like Every Other Day),” “Ahi Viene El Tren (Just As In Spring),” “Outside It Rains for Them” and “Hora Libre” (Thrones and Believers)” demonstrate his knack for melodic resonance while merging his Spanish lyrics with Martin’s English ones.

Martin also adds evocative new lyrics for to some notable instrumentals, reinventing and expanding Bill Frisell’s “Throughout [Hold On],” Brad Mehldau’s “Ode [To Make The Most Of Today]” and Kurt Rosenwinkel’s “Cycle 5 [Freedom Run],”), as well as Grenadier’s “State of the Union [In The Nick Of Time].”

The Upstate Project—so named due to the partnership’s origins in northern New York state—began to come together when Martin contacted Klein to explore the possibility of making music together.

“Guillermo is someone that I hold in high esteem,” Martin states. “Working with him was something I had hoped to do at some point in my career. I am always seeking a real challenge in music, and I knew that his point of view would provide that.  When I reached out to him, I learned that he had just returned to the States from Argentina and was living in upstate New York, only about 40 minutes away from where I was.  Like the old days.

“What the project would be wasn’t clear initially,” says Martin.  “But shortly after coming together, Guillermo suggested that it be collaborative, and I loved that idea.  It gave me the opportunity to think about lyrics for his songs, which opened up a lot of possibilities as we brought material to the table.”

“We exchanged tunes and then got together to play at my house,” Klein recalls.  “The repertoire grew, as I suggested a Kurt Rosenwinkel tune and she suggested the other ones.  I spent time transcribing and arranging them for a group, and she found guitar parts and wrote the lyrics and harmonized voices.”

It was only natural that Martin’s husband Grenadier and frequent collaborator Ballard would come on board to complete the quartet.

“Rebecca and I have played music together for 20 years, as long as we’ve known each other,” Grenadier notes.  “For me, there is nothing like making music with your partner; the level of empathy and intimacy is unmatched.  I’ve known Guillermo for many years and have always been a fan of his arranging and composing, and thought that he and Rebecca shared some of the same musical imperatives in the realm of color and texture.  So the idea of blending this all together seemed very intriguing and also very natural.”

“I have known all of these folks for more than two decades, and I love them and their music,” Ballard adds.  “This project was simply a continuation of these fruitful relationships.”

The musicians allowed the material to develop in its own time.

“Rebecca, Guillermo and I started getting together and playing the songs,” Grenadier says.  “It was like an archeological dig, finding the core of each one and bringing that to the surface.  It was a slow process but very organic as they both so beautifully are.   We performed a string of dates in New York City as a trio, to continue to flesh out the material and to tighten up the sound.”

“Larry, Guillermo and I had played this music for a year before Jeff arrived,” Martin explains.  “Since he lives in Europe now, Jeff could only get to New York in time to record, and after one rehearsal, we went into the studio with Pete Rende, who recorded, helped to produce and steer the ship.”

The Upstate Project’s songs are a genuine collaboration, allowing Martin and Klein to explore different aspects of their talents.

“Guillermo’s music stirs up emotions that are very different from what my own melodies and harmony ever could, and that alone made it possible to explore other worlds,” Martin says.  “I built stories from some very unusual perspectives.  The lyrics in my own songs tend to be bittersweet.  In Guillermo’s music, I found myself exploring darker points of view.  It was a liberating experience for that reason, as it’s important to venture outside of your comfort zone whenever you can.”

“For me, all these songs show the idea of melody reigning supreme.” Grenadier asserts.  “All the arrangements, sound and solos support the melodies, lifting them up so they shine brighter. The melodies of these songs are so strong, and as a musician, I didn’t want to get in the way of that.  I wanted the music to lift up these melodies.”

Having allowed The Upstate Project’s birth cycle to unfold in its own time, Martin and Klein are keeping an open mind about the possibility of future group activity.

“I am just glad this music is recorded.” says Klein, “It feels like a complete cycle.”

“I like to think about music and life in general like swimming in a lake,” she concludes.  “You know when walking into the deep, there are suddenly warm spots that appear to come out of nowhere.  There is never anything predictable in my creative endeavors or their outcome.  I just keep pressing forward knowing that at some point, that mysterious warm spot will appear again where I can hang out for a while—until it gets cold and it’s time to move along again.”

PREORDER
The Upstate Project (Release date: April 14, 2017)

VISIT
The Upstate Project’s website for more information

TILLERY (Rebecca Martin, Gretchen Parlato, Becca Stevens) Available on Bandcamp Exclusively.

tillery_cover_final

 

Now you can purchase the Tillery recording, a collaborative project by Rebecca Martin, Gretchen Parlato and Becca Stevens on Band Camp.

PURCHASE ON BAND CAMP

4 1/2 Stars in Downbeat Magazine (October, 2016)

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“A Jazz Singer Fights Niagara Bottling” in The New Yorker.

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“Our group’s initial objection was that an enormous amount of the city of Kingston’s public water supply—1.75 million gallons per day—was to be sold to a bottling company to bottle and to sell without enough evidence that our water source could maintain that amount over the long haul,” she explained. “We were also disturbed that a multimillion-dollar corporation was allowed to purchase our water at a fraction of what local residents and businesses pay.” Generations of families in the area had invested in the local water infrastructure for a century, but, without warning, a water board could decide what would happen to a public resource without consulting the community. Martin and her fellow-activists began organizing public meetings to make residents aware of what was happening, and they went to meetings of the Kingston Common Council and Kingston Water Board to interrogate members on their decision-making. “That’s what we were managing—from my bedroom,” Martin said, laughing.

READ Full Article in The New Yorker

“You have to find your independence to be a good partner and collaborator.”

Photo credit: Pat Kepic

Photo credit: Pat Kepic

“As jazz singers go, Rebecca Martin exudes the plainest sort of poise, almost radical in its utter lack of flash. When she wasn’t cradling an acoustic guitar…she held her arms clasped behind her back, as if to make sure they wouldn’t be a distraction. She sang quietly, favoring slow tempos.  Her embellishments registered on the granular level, in the placement of a phrase or a light catch in her throat. She was unerringly faithful to the melodies of the songs, both standards and originals…she made them seem less like songs than like articulations of her state of mind.”

– Nate Chinen, The New York Times

Over the past 25 years, Rebecca Martin has been a professional musician, community organizer, educator, wife and mother. A native of Maine,  Martin moved to New York City and lived there for a decade before migrating North and landing in Kingston, New York.  There, she co-founded KingstonCitizens.org in 2006 as a way to understand the inner workings of local government and to create a platform for civic engagement in her new hometown.

“Music and community work involve different parts of my being, and it feels good and natural to exercise them both,” she says, drawing parallels between community organizing and her creative life. “Music requires time and space while organizing, details and time crunches. Both are intense.”

KingstonCitizens.org’s earliest projects included removing “souvenir” knives that turned out to be illegal weapons from a local gas station; from advocating for the city to create an updated comprehensive plan  to  discussing different forms of government.  (READ Rebecca Martin’s Editorial in the Kingston Timesand hosting many educational forums and debates with elected officials on dozens of topics spanning from sex offenders to meadow growing. Relevant topics were selected from month to month. “We wanted to give citizens the opportunity to understand the issues better and to provide them with an action that would include them in solutions. Our focus on education was primary from the start.”

“Rebecca Martin is known in Kingston as one of the city’s most committed and effective community activists. She was the first executive director of the Kingston Land Trust, which has become a formidable force for conservation, green spaces, and community building in the city.”  – Lynn Woods, The Kingston Times 

Martin was snatched up in 2010 to serve as the Executive Director of the Kingston Land Trust.  Under her leadership, the trust was touted as a ‘national model’ by the Land Trust Alliance in the organization’s effort to develop programming that could bring the community closer to its open space. Rebecca was instrumental in starting the non-profit group’s Urban Agriculture initiatives, Kingston’s Rail Trail program, and an effort to protect African-American history and burial grounds in the city of Kingston.

Read more

Rebecca Martin’s Collaborative Group with Guillermo Klein Called UPSTATE in New York Times.

 

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UPSTATE in Today’s New York Times Arts & Leisure Section. 

“BACK IN TOWN WITH TRICKY TUNES: A composer doesn’t necessarily mean a songwriter, especially in Jazz. Guillermo Klein, originally from Argentina, who has written brilliantly for his jazz groups in New York and Barcelona since the mid-90’s, never made a distinction. He creates pieces full of tricky counterpoint and canon, but h also writes emotionally direct, harmonically complex, circular songs to bee sung by himself and others….Not long ago, Mr. Klein moved back to the New York area and started collaborating with the singer Rebecca Martin and the bassist Larry Grenadier. The idea was to put lyrics to Mr. Klein’s compositions, but the repertory expanded to include other composer’s work, too. At the Rockwood Music Hall on Wednesday’s in February.”

The group is set to record in May of 2015 joined by the drummer Jeff Ballard. Recorded and Produced by Pete Rende.

CLICK on the FACEBOOK EVENT for ticket links to their performances.

 

New Video: “Don’t Mean A Thing At All” By Rebecca Martin

 

DON’T MEAN A THING AT ALL (from the album TWAIN)
R. Martin

When all of the house lights are taken down
And all of the people there
That traveled for hundreds of miles around
To hear their songs fill the air
Their beauty, the quiet and heaviness
The shadows they recall
Don’t mean a thing at all

A song would begin with a feeling
That’s had when the melody came
The words are assembled then written
Its meaning is somewhat relayed
On tip toes and reeling through misty eyes
The writing’s on the wall
Don’t mean a thing at all

Before the night gets underway
Your mind could change
What once was true that very day
Is now not the same

And there’s no way she could know
You couldn’t tell her so
The only way to live it was by giving it a go
No doubt there’ll be something for everyone
When turning every stone
She can’t leave well enough alone