Monday, March 18, 2013

Musical Heat and Light When the Days Grow Dark: Pictures from My December 2012 Holiday Concert

Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein) in holiday concert

Lisa B and her band at holiday concert 2012
Creating light and heat through song for the winter holidays
Ben Flint, Fred Randolph, Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein), and Alan Hall
Ben Flint, Fred Randolph, Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein), and Alan Hall
Great fun at my December 2012 holiday concert at Musically Minded Academy in Oakland, Calif. I love communicating with the audience through fun and meaningful holiday songs from various traditions  and adding my own spoken-sung originals. 

Our set ranged from "Let It Snow" to "Hine Ma Tov," from "My Favorite Things" to my original "Holiday in Oakland," from Matisyahu's "Miracle" about Chanukah to a magical reimagining of "Night and Day" for the winter solstice.

The band was creative, energized, and in synch with me and each other. I love that feeling! It's like riding an amazing conveyance with an alert crew, who are not only navigating the landscape but bringing it into being. 

Pianist Ben Flint
Ben Flint always looks strikingly relaxed while powering jazz, soul, folk and rock grooves, harmonic depth, and emotional exploration aplenty on piano.

Bassist Fred Randolph
Drummer Alan Hall and singer-poet Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein)Fred Randolph on bass and Alan Hall on drums generated  mighty rhythmic underpinnings (even when soft) with just the right balance of energy and empathy.


Pianist Ben Flint, singer-poet Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein), and bassist Fred Randolph at holiday concert 2012
Stage directions are crucial with improvisation
Lisa B's (Lisa Bernstein's) holiday concert 2012 at Musically Minded Academy, Oakland, Calif.
An attentive crowd shows up even on a Sat. night in December
Fred Randolph and Ben Flint strike a pose
Fred Randolph and Ben Flint striking a mature gangsta pose
Lisa B's (Lisa Bernstein's) band (Ben Flint, Fred Randolph, and Alan Hall) with MMA director Anna Orias in hat
Anna Orias, right, runs Musically Minded Academy
Our set ranged from "Let It Snow" to "Hine Ma Tov," from "My Favorite Things" to my original "Holiday in Oakland," from Matisyahu's "Miracle" about Chanukah to a magical reimagining of "Night and Day" for the winter solstice

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

"The New War" in current issue of "War, Literature and the Arts"

War, Literature and the Arts vol. 24 cover from lisabmusic.blogspot.com
Here's the new issue of War, Literature and the Arts including one of my poems. I'm really enjoying it, especially the nonfiction. The journal is published by the U.S. Air Force Academy, interestingly.

http://wlajournal.com/24_1/24__index.html

My poem in this issue, called "The New War," was written as an epilogue to my poem sequence "Persephone Post-War." It's reprinted below. Go to the magazine for the evocative work filling the rest of the magazine, many of it by soldiers and veterans. 

L i s a  B e r n s t e i n  (L i s a  B)

The New War

The new war has started.
Photos of caskets
disappear the next day from the newspapers.
The new wounded come home
with nano-reels of film curled
in their cells, inscriptions
for their children,
genetic messages for the living world.

The civilians recall their airtight homes
as one frame appears on the news
and another:
the man with the hood over his head
and wires strung from his extended arms,
the man crouched naked before the dogs…

The new war has started.
The new wounded come home
with hidden inscriptions for their children…

Do you hear the singing far below us, the stirring
in the soft dirt?

I won’t walk again on that darkening ground.
I can still taste the rotten fruit
where the dead keep turning
and the sweet honey I found near it.
Let the fruit fall here in the open light
where we can see it and eat it.

But the veterans will go down again, Persephones,
every winter,
and if they’re lucky, only then.

The new war goes on.
The soldiers send messages, digital snapshots
like bright, strange apples fallen to earth—
the red blood, the randomly arranged bodies.

Sickening fruit—may it fall
into the light
and be seen by the world.

copyright © 2013 Lisa Bernstein