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Announcing the Essential Work(er)s Project

What does it mean to be an “essential worker”? Who does “essential work”? Is creative work essential?

Art by David LaMorte

This summer, I invite you to join in supporting new musical creation.  Over the past several months, I’ve been shepherding the Essential Work(er)s Project, a virtual concert series for an age of pandemic. 

For this project, I joined together with diverse musicians around the country to collaborate on a series of new, original pieces. The musicians in this project range from Grammy-winning artists to classical cellists to roots guitarists to free improvisers. Together we created new compositions, adding to each other’s ideas and voices to develop something entirely new.

The resulting pieces of music are exciting and dynamic, reaching across genres to explore the contours of our current lives.

We are so excited to debut this music through our summer series. We will be releasing a new composition on the 1st and 15th of July and August via Patreon (www.patreon.com/ewp). You can subscribe to the entire series for as little as $20 (just $5 per piece), or you can contribute more for additional levels of access and involvement.

Your subscription to this series helps support working musicians during a challenging time. In serving as a patron for new musical work, you also promote and foster the creation of new art, and speak to music’s enduring value. Artists have always helped individuals interrogate their shared humanity. The Essential Work(er)s Project provides a space for musicians to continue this work during a time of pandemic, and provides an important mechanism for mutual aid.  Proceeds from this project will help support those musicians — in this project and beyond — who have lost a core source of their livelihood due to the pandemic. While our summer performances schedules have been cancelled, virtual summer series like this one carry on.

Learn more about the project on Patreon (www.patreon.com/ewp). You can also support us by following us on Instagram (@essential_workers_project), and sharing the project with friends and on social media. Thanks for being a supporter of live music, and I hope to see you (virtually) at the series!

Become a Patron!

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Tim Peck / Dan Blake / Sinan Bakir

  • Tim Peck
  • Dan Blake
  • Sinan Bakir

Join us tonight for the third concert in the Music Underground series at Rockwood Music Hall (stage 3). This movable monthly series will engage diverse musicians in engaging musical conversations. Come every month and see what happens!

$15 cover (http://www.ticketfly.com/event/1804245)

Tim Peck is an American composer and performer based in Brooklyn, NY, where he has been an in-demand collaborator with artists from all genres and disciplines. Tim has been a Fellow at prestigious international artists colonies, including Moulin à Nef in Auvillar, France; the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, Virginia; and Willapa Bay Air in Oysterville, Washington. As a composer, Tim explores the contemporary conversational possibilities between genres. He has composed music for ensembles large and small. He was awarded the Periclean Award for his compositions for nine-piece jazz orchestra. Currently, Tim is finishing a set of twenty-four solo piano studies that explore contemporary harmonic concepts, polyrhythm, electronics, and motivic transformation for acoustic piano. Deeply sensitive to geography, Tim has traveled to many beautiful locations — including Abiquiu, New Mexico; Paris, France; Chefchaouen, Morocco — which are serving as inspiration for a forthcoming suite of small ensemble compositions. Tim completed his Master of Music degree in Modern American Music at the Longy School of Music of Bard College.

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Saxophonist and composer Dan Blake has led a wide-ranging career that spans many genres and musical communities. His work has been commissioned by new music luminaries like Mivos Quartet, the Tri Centric Orchestra, and has received support from The Jerome Foundation, New Music USA and ASCAP. He also produces the annual Concert To Feed The Hungry, an event celebrating the struggle to end hunger and malnutrition in poor communities around the world. He holds a Ph.D. in composition from the City University of New York and is currently on faculty at the New School for Social Research, and the Conservatory at Brooklyn College.

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Turkish guitarist/composer Sinan Bakir is noted as a virtuoso player and a masterful composer by music critics and his peers. By the time he graduated from Hacettepe University with a degree in engineering he was granted a scholarship from the Hartford Conservatory and moved to United States. In his new found home the guitarist kept writing tunes, attending sessions,and playing regular gigs & music festivals. His all original debut album “On My Way” (2009) with bassist Thomson Kneeland and drummer Mark Ferber, followed by a quartet recording titled “Tales and Stories”(2012) with pianist Warren Byrd. While”All About Jazz” describing Bakir’s sophomore record “Tales&Stories” as an album full of creative music with a genuinely original flavor, “Jazziz” magazine calls the album a “pleasure packed minor masterpiece”. “Sound Waves” magazine recognizes Bakir as a highly polished guitarist, too diverse for a single label, while describing his guitar work from subtle, soothing shades of minimalist melodies to blistering, finessed and impossibly fast runs. While maintaining a busy teaching schedule Sinan continues to perform in diverse settings from solo recitals to trio concerts as well as many other musical situations.