A short recap on our first 365 days of the Notes for Nourishment concert series!

Notes for Nourishment’s monthly benefit concerts began one year ago this month, in the gorgeous acoustics and ambiance of our host venue, the Basilica of St Joseph in Alameda, California. Since then we've raised over $11,000 for charitable causes and featured world-renowned artists from 15 different countries and cultures! 

Background and Concept: The Notes for Nourishment series is a project of the global nonprofit, Listen for Life. The concept is simple but unique: internationally renowned artists of all cultures/countries, donate their time and talents to nourish their audience; listeners in turn donate funds to benefit nonprofits that nourish the hungry, homeless and hurting in the community and beyond. 

Goals: Our primary goal is to serve great artists who have generous hearts, by giving them a ready-made opportunity to make a greater difference for the causes they care about. Secondly, we want to make it possible for music listeners of all ages and demographics to get the rare opportunity to hear these great artists, for free, in 1-hour, informal, family-friendly programs.And as the monthly series continues to grow a core of loyal, regular attendees from across a large economical and geographical region, we are building, energizing and healing a community, through music. 

Achievements in first year:

During our first year of concerts we've already featured master musicians from North and South America; Western, Central and Eastern Europe; Palestine, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Taiwan, Israel, and China! 

Thanks to the generosity of our performers and their appreciative listeners, all of these concerts have collected a total of over $11,000 in donations for a wide variety of nonprofits and causes, including Alameda Point Collaborative, Alameda Food Bank, Project Open Hand, Welcome the Stranger (a refugee settlement/assistance program), Bay Area Music Project, Slavyanka, Mercy Retirement and Care Center for Seniors, OIGC, Asian American Women Advocates, Midway Shelter, SAVE in Fremont, Asian American Donor Program, SJND scholarships, SJB projects, MusicaMarin, & Alameda Education Foundation.

Coming up: 

Future beneficiaries (from upcoming months' concerts) include Girls Inc, Alzheimers Services of the East Bay (ASEB), a women's shelter in Oakland, national refugee services organization, Veterans' music therapy services, and many more. 

We've already arranged wonderful, internationally-renowned artists and monthly programs for the rest of 2017 and beyond - for example, some upcoming dates are May 21, June 25, July 30, August 27, September 24....

Expanding the concept

Musicians and music-listeners alike are loving this concept, and LFL has had invites to replicate the series with partner organizations in other cities and countries. The plan is to launch our first such collaborative effort within a few months, in San Jose, California, together with Barbara Day Turner and her San Jose Chamber Orchestra players and their colleagues. 

Announcing LFL's fundraising campaign for the NFN project:

Notes for Nourishment now needs to be the beneficiary of some donated funding itself, to help us cover the many incidental costs that arise when keeping a successful, high quality performance series going on a regular monthly basis (marketing, publicity, printing costs, etc). Then we can ensure that the maximum amount of donations in the concerts go directly to the beneficiary organizations each month. We're also trying to get videos made of each concert and launched on our new NotesForNourishment YouTube channel so that all of you around the globe won't miss any of the performances! 

Can you help? No amount is too small. Listen for Life is hosting a One-Month fundraising campaign right now to celebrate its 19th anniversary worldwide, and it's also participating in #EastBayGives one-day online event on May 4th! 

• Visit www.EastBayGives.org/LFL  ANY day between now and May 4th to schedule a donation for Listen for Life, which will greatly benefit the NFN programs. 
• OR visit PayPal.com ANY day of the yearm and put in    Donations@listenforlife.org  as the beneficiary
• Traditional postal mail: a check or money order (any country's currency is great!) payable to Listen for Life (marked for NFN if you so wish) can be sent to LFL, 2301 San Antonio Ave, Ste#1, Alameda, Calif. 94501,  USA. 

Follow Notes for Nourishment on our FB page, and follow Listen for Life on FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more. 

Questions? Call LFL on +1 510 540 8136 or email aanderson@listenforlife.org