Greetings Music Lovers,
My name is Michael Dominici and I've been a volunteer with WWOZ since 1996. As a native New Orleanian and a life long music lover, I've had a chance to experience a lot of great music in this town. Still, every once in a while I get caught off guard by a performance that truly blows my mind. That happened this winter over at The Marigny Opera House when musicians Mark Growden, Helen Gillet, Aurora Nealand and others performed at the old, re-purposed church in a stunning performance without amplification. In New Orleans we are accustomed to applause and 'noise' at any given show, but this performance elicited a stunned, almost holy cinematic silence. We heard and felt every note and it was a soul-stirring experience.
I made the suggestion that such a setting would be perfect for a presentation of Leonard Cohen's music with some of these same musicians. Soon Alex McMurray, James Singleton, Larry Sieberth, and Troi Bechet were invited to form a group called Bards of Bywater. If our project is successfully funded via KICKSTARTER we will record a tribute to Leonard Cohen at Piety with engineer Mark Bingham and present three performances: Thursday, April 5th at Snug Harbor, and Friday, April 6th and Saturday, April 7th at Cafe Istanbul in the Healing
Center.
Today, we are featured in a music blog called The Vinyl District. Check it out!
http://www.thevinyldistrict.com/city/neworleans/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/158035602/bards-of-bywater-yours-for-a-song-tribute-to-leona
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WW0IHeh84mk