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

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.

“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 Times) and 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 “TILLERY” with Gretchen Parlato and Becca Stevens Host Master Class Series in Boston, MA. in December, 2012.

TILLERY, a group that features a collaboration between Rebecca Martin, Gretchen Parlato and Becca Stevens, has organized an entire weekend of master classes in the financial district of Boston, Massachusetts on Saturday, December 1st and Sunday, December 2nd, 2012.

Participants will have the opportunity to choose from a selection of four master classes that include topics such as songwriting, band leading, performance, and sharing songs or song ideas in an intimate setting with the three renowned and accomplished musicians.

Students will become inspired and meet new friends in a supportive and nurturing atmosphere.  Each master class is three hours in length and start at $150.00.

Sign-up for two or more to enjoy discounted classes. Students who apply for all four will receive a ticket to a private Tillery concert on Sunday, December 2nd at 8:00pm (limit one ticket per student).

For more information contact: tillerymusic1@gmail.com or visit www.tillerygals.com  Read more

Rebecca Martin Contributes to ‘My Life is Bold’ an Arts for Life Project

Rebecca Martin along with Becca Stevens, Gretchen Parlato, Tillery, Aaron Parks, Kate McGarry, Taylor Eigsti, Harish Raghavan, Larry Grenadier and others contributed to the newly released album “My Life is Bold” an Arts for Life Project.

A release date will be scheduled soon, and all proceeds from the CD will be donated to ‘Arts for Life’.

“Music is an integral part of the vital support services the Arts for Life team offers to young patients and families. Arts for Life Music Fellow Colin Allured describes his job as “growing happy cell” where cancer cells used to be. In 2009, Becca Stevens sang at an AFL fundraiser and she and her father, William Stevens, had the idea to set some of the children’s poetry to music for the event. The response to those two songs was so strong that discussions of a CD began, including Becca’s brother Bill who is a composer and recording studio engineer.

Producer William Stevens says, “We were overwhelmed by how many composers and musicians were willing to give so much time and creative energy to this project. But it didn’t stop there. The CD was made possible by the generosity of patrons, by free time provided by recording studios in North Carolina and New York, with the encouragement and support of the AFL staff and board, and most of all by the children in Arts for Life and their families who showed us the power of art to inspire, to change, and to heal.”

Read more

The New York Times Raves….twice in a week.

The New York Times gives enthusiastic reviews of Rebecca Martin’s new album “When I Was Long Ago”, and  in support of her next live performance in New York City on Thursday, December 16th 2010.  Showtimes are 7:30pm and 9:30pm at the JAZZ STANDARD. For tickets, visit this LINK.‎

“The jazz singer Rebecca Martin can sing slow swing with a supreme sense of centering around the pulse, re-designing melodies and making her voice crinkle at emotional points. And when the drumming goes away completely, she grows stronger…the musicians give her molasses swing and empathy and lots of empty space, and she takes care of the rest.”

 Ben Ratliff, The New York Times

“On her gorgeously intimate new album ‘When I Was Long Ago’ the singer Rebecca Martin addresses a program of jazz standards as if sifting through treasured momentos”.

 Nate Chinen, New York Times

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