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An Evening of a Fusion of Cultural Rhythms, featuring special guests at NJPAC’s Horizon Sounds of the City

Newark, June 21^st, 2024 – On July 11th, as part of the Horizon Sounds of the City series, renowned percussionist Cyro Baptista will dazzle audiences in a free outdoor concert at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) in Newark. Known for his innovative sounds and captivating rhythms, Baptista’s performance promises to be an unforgettable evening of world music and jazz fusion.

Brazilian percussionist and composer Cyro Baptista has carved a niche for himself in contemporary jazz, experimental, and world music, spanning a wide range of styles. His collaborations with artists such as Herbie Hancock, Paul Simon, Yo-Yo Ma, John Zorn, Wynton Marsalis, and Brazilian legends Milton Nascimento and Caetano Veloso have cemented his reputation as one of the foremost percussionists globally.

In his latest project, CHAMA, released on the Ropeadope label, Baptista displays his visionary approach to music. Listeners are taken on a vibrant journey through mythical towns filled with engaging tales and colorful characters. Experience the magic of CHAMA life and immerse yourself in a night of rhythmic excitement, cultural diversity, and joyous music.

A powerful ensemble of talented musicians leads Baptista’s CHAMA Band, including Zé Luis Oliveira on saxophone and flute, Felipe Hostins on accordion, Tim Keiper on drums, and Jason Fraticelli on bass and cuatro. Through their rhythmic complexity and dynamic performances, they create a dynamic and culturally rich musical experience.

The NJPAC concert will showcase special guests, enhancing unity, cultural exchange, and local artist empowerment. FORRÓ CHAMA will feature David Vieira and Mauro Refosco, members of Forró in the Dark and “American Utopia” by David Byrne. PAGODE CHAMA with Helder Celso, Kauê Alves, Junior Karegato, and Renatinhu from Newark’s vibrant music scene, adding a unique flair to the performance.

Plus, enjoy a vibrant dance party featuring Sabrina Evangelista & Gustavo Nunes, Sabina Ciari, and Dora Flor from BLOCO FROM THE BLOCK. Don’t miss this extraordinary evening with Cyro Baptista and the CHAMA band at NJPAC’s Horizon Sounds of the City.

Event Details:

• Date:July 11, 2024
• Time:6:00 PM
• Venue:Chambers Plaza on the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) grounds

Join us for an extraordinary evening with Cyro Baptista and experience the magic of CHAMA. For more information visit https://cyrobaptista.com.

CHAMA

Ropeadope 

It’s probably fair to say that only Cyro Baptista could concoct a mix of music including Brazilian, Mexican, and Afro-Cuban forms with hints of jazz, funk, and whatever else may fit, sometimes with multiple forms within the same song. Yet, even while you may not detect the particular style or have a total grasp of what he’s up to, he somehow makes it accessible and infectious.” Jim Hynes, Glide Magazine

Link to video DANGER ZONE shot in Bahia Brazil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n86iJmxHQE

Link to live video PERIGO, shot in NYC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC-QBJPy-fQ

Media Contact:

Nilza Barros
N&P Media Consulting, LLC
nilzabarros@npmediaconsulting.com
+201-852-7829

Career

Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Baptista arrived in the U.S. in 1980 with a scholarship to Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York.

During the 1980s, he worked on films with John Zorn and appeared on Zorn’s albums in the 1990s. Also in the ’90s, he appeared on albums by Marisa Monte, Holly Cole, and Cassandra Wilson. In 1997 he released his first solo album, Vira Loucos, with cover versions of music by Heitor Villa-Lobos. The album was recorded with Marc Ribot and Nana Vasconcelos and released by Avant, a label owned by Zorn. He was a member of Zorn’s band Dreamers.^[2]

He recorded with pianist Herbie Hancock on his album Possibilities. He recorded and performed worldwide with Hancock’s Grammy award-winning Gershwin’s World. He toured with Yo-Yo Ma’s Brazil Project and appeared on the Obrigado Brazil, which won two Grammy awards. He collaborated with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra for a Brazilian Carnival modern jazz concert. For over two years, he toured with Paul Simon and appeared on his Concert in Central Park album. He has toured worldwide with Sting.

Baptista has also worked with Paul Simon, Trey Anastasio, Laurie Anderson, Badi Assad, Derek Bailey, Gato Barbieri, Daniel Barenboim, Kathleen Battle, David Byrne, Dr. John, Brian Eno, Melissa Etheridge, Stephen Kent, Ivan Lins, Bobby McFerrin, Medeski Martin & Wood, Milton Nascimento, Robert Palmer, Carlos Santana, Tim Sparks, Spyro Gyra, James Taylor, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Caetano Veloso

Baptista formed Beat the Donkey, a percussion and dance ensemble. The name comes from a Portuguese expression for “let’s do it” or “let’s go”. The band’s personnel and genre are in flux. Sometimes it includes Ribot and Zorn. The music can be rock, funk, Brazilian, or Balkan.^[3]

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Who’s ready to share their heart with us?

Either in love or hurt, angry or disheveled, pour it out all on paper. Either in English or Romanian or just in the language that you created and only the fowls of the air can comprehend, pour it all out. Why? It’s cathartic, healing, exhilarating, it’s a prayer, it’s a dance on paper, it’s a bandaid, it’s a cure that will endure.

Ready? Let’s go!

And one more thing…

BEST POEMS of LOVE ARE AWARDED WITH ONE OF OUR CDs “Church of Love”.

Love, Gabriela & Mihaela Modorcea

Inspirația n-are oră, n-are ceas

Inspirația e un leac

E un pansament când inima s-a accidentat

Picăturile curg lung pe streașini, iar doctorul nu s-a arătat

Doar poemul meu scris pentru tine e un leac

N-are oră, n-are ceas

E un pansament pentru un veac

Tick tock, tick tock

Ceasul bate, parc-a stat

Doctorul nu s-a arătat

Doar un corb flămând in camer-a zburat,

Flip flap, îmi unge rănile, alină durerile

E un leac

De când tu ai plecat

Totul a stat

Doar poemul meu scris pentru tine e un leac…

Nedeschis, poate-aruncat

Însă pentru mine e un leac

Pentru un veac

And two translations of the same poem –

first Gabriela’s, then Mihaela’sut by customizing the font, style and format.

Inspiration has no clock,
It’s a bandaid for a decade
for the heart that hurts a lot
Drops are sliding on my sill
The doc hasn’t come in for the ill
My verse only has no clock
It’s a bandaid for a decade
For the heart that hurts a lot
Tick tock, tick tock
The clock strikes, it stopped
The doc hasn’t come in for the ill
A black raven sings my trill
Flip, flap – licking wounds onto my sill
It’s a bandaid for a decade
For the heart that hurts a lot
Since you left…
my poem untouched,
maybe hurled inside the past
The clock stopped
My verse only has no clock
It’s a bandaid for a decade
for my heart that hurts a lot

Inspiration has no clock, no hour,
Comes as an ointment with divine power
For the pure when their heart is crashed
By the train of love unraveled, smashed.
Drops of pain are dripping in my room,
The doctor did not come to fix my roof
Yet my poem for you is the window
with no frame to detain the pain…
Let it fly, Let is sigh!
A distant alarm clock, a tick tock
Can be heard again on my dock…
Oh, stop!
I hear my poem running in the shower
Dripping bloody tears, sour –oh, stop…this painful hour.
The doc did not come to fix the roof
Just a famished raven in my room has loomed
Flip flap – he licks my wounds, brushes the gloom.
Since you moved away everything has stayed, intact:
papers flying, rustlings in the fire.
But my poem is the cure, I’ll endure…
my poem will, for sure.
The notebook opened, runs in streams of light
It is already sunrise…and a feather keeps writing itself to daylight.
I know you did not open it; the papers are so cold
Your heart is still sealed with the old
Maybe the horizon can open up your eyes
But I hear it already tried… you want to stay like that, blind.
But thank you cause now I see the Love…Divine.
Who am I? Now I see Life, now I know why…

Watch “Church of Love” by Indiggo Twins

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Haven’t seen it? “The Meg” was released simultaneously in the summer of 2018 in mainland China and the United States, and in just three days of release, the box office in mainland China exceeded 300 million yuan; in the United States for three days, it also raked in nearly 200 million dollars! Still haven’t heard of it? When is the last time you’ve been to the movies?

Excellent Sino-American co-production films

Have you heard of “Kung Fu Panda”? The story of a lazy panda who dreams of becoming a kung fu legend. Kung Fu Panda was a global phenomenon: Kung Fu panda was everywhere!

“Kung Fu Panda” ($631 million at the global box office) and “Kung Fu Panda 2” ($665 million at the global box office) have made DreamWorks so much money that the whole world sought for “Kung Fu Panda 3” by a Sino-American co-production! After four years of hard work, “Kung Fu Panda 3” was brought into existence in 2016, earning $400 million at the box office in four days of release and $960 million in its final 30 days, making it the best-selling anime movie in Chinese history ($521 million worldwide).

“Kung Fu Panda” series movie

“Kung Fu Panda 3” set another record as the first ever Sino-American co-produced animated film. The Kung Fu Panda series is the brainchild of DreamWorks CEO Katzenberg and Shanghai Chinese Culture Industry Investment Fund Chairman Li Ruigang. Due to the super strong Chinese behind-the-scenes team, about 1/3 of the entire “Kung Fu Panda 3” film was produced in China.

Another record set by “Kung Fu Panda 3” is the large number of Chinese elements, such as jade and the creation of the incredibly beautiful and verdant Qingcheng Mountain in Sichuan, Po’s hometown. Another example is the Po’s tribe’s skill of Qi Gong, which is one of the essences of Chinese culture. If you go to Qingcheng Mountain, there will be men, women and children practicing kung fu on the mountain. Not to mention those original ink animations and Chinese landscapes, a strong sense of Chinese culture can be seen throughout the entire film.

“Kung Fu Panda 3″ set in Chengdu Qingcheng Mountain and Jinli ancient street

Here’s the problem: Chinese and American cultures are different, which dictates a different way of storytelling. Chinese people like to teach while being entertained and everything has to end up with a moral. However, in the US, if a movie can make the audience sit in the chair for 90 minutes without moving, then that will be a big success.

Back then, the difficulty was not to find a few hundred million to make a movie. Financing was not a problem in 2012 when Katzenberg teamed up with Li Ruigang and Hong Kong Lan Kwai Fong Group Chairman Sheng Zhiwen to set up the joint venture “Oriental DreamWorks” and create “Kung Fu Panda 3”. The company raised $330 million in its first round of funding based on a 1.6x return on investment for Kung Fu Panda 1 and Kung Fu Panda 2. The joint venture project is 54.55% owned by the Chinese side and 45.45% by the American side. Later, Kung Fu Panda 3 only used 1/3 of the capital.

The biggest dispute between Li Ruigang in Shanghai and Katzenberg was who had the right to make the “Oriental Dream Factory” story.

Li Ruigang, Chairman of Shanghai Chinese Culture Industry Investment Fund

Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation

Li Ruigang insisted that all the animated films produced by Oriental Dream Factory are Chinese stories, so the Chinese side must have the right to speak and must have its own understanding, which means borrowing the “magic hands” of Hollywood to tell the Chinese stories.

Katzenberg, however, insisted on his right to make decisions about the story, saying he knew at a glance what kind of story would sell. His reason was very simple: if he likes you, he’ll pay for you. The average box office of the movies released by DreamWorks was between 400 million and 500 million USD. At that time in China, only “Pleasant Goat” and ”Big Big Wolf” made more than 100 million RMB at the box office. That was the status quo in 2012, and there were only 8,000 screens in Chinese cinemas.

The final solution was to set up a creative executive committee in Oriental Dream Factory by Rui Gang Lai. Katzenberg and Li Ruigang, would get a vote that must be agreed upon. The latter agreement was a betting proposition – if the first three films were successful, Li Ruigang would have the final decision thereafter. Faced with the fast-growing consumer market in China, Katzenberg decided to “bet” on it.

At the same time, a grand dream project was rising with “Kung Fu Panda 3” in a prime location of 8.6 square kilometers in Xuhui Riverside. This project, tentatively named “Dream Center”, was the first cultural real estate project jointly operated by Shanghai Chinese Culture Industry Fund and China Development Finance, with a total investment of about 15 billion yuan. It was the ” Dream Center” that landed in China together with “Kung Fu Panda”.

Such a commercial masterpiece is hard to see in China’s animation industry. Even later, the dark horse of the domestic animation box office champion, “Monkey King: Hero Is Back”, after the box office broke 1 billion, not even a shadow of a derivative product to see. Whereas “Kung Fu Panda” was already planning a $15 billion “Kung Fu Panda” theme park before the movie even started shooting!

Moving away from the success of Kung Fu Panda 1, 2 and 3, China’s box office in 2020 will surpass the 10 billion mark, catching up with the United States. 8,000 screens has increased to more than 80,000. But why isn’t there an inspiring and heartfelt movie like “The Pursuit of Happiness”? In the 40 years of reform and opening up, from 1981’s “Hibiscus Town” to 2021’s “Hi, Mom!” There is not a single story on the screen that can make billions of people around the world eager to know the story behind China’s economic myth. Whether it’s in English or Chinese, China’s economic miracle was created by the Chinese people. How did they create it? What kind of a heartfelt Chinese story can we tell that will bring audiences around the world into the heart of China?

Dr. Xiaoqiu Ma, Lifetime Chairman of the Family Awards, connecting to Hollywood

The story we are all looking for is Ma Xiaoqiu’s story. After listening to the 12 songs written and sung by her and several pictures that might become movie commercials, two Hollywood movie production companies decided to start shooting the story of Ma Xiaoqiu.

“I’m writing a Marvel movie,” said a screenwriter for a Netflix series after an interview with Ms. Ma Xiaoqiu. “Today, I saw a Marvel-style hero in my life.”

Another person after listening to Ma Xiaoqiu’s songs: “Ode to Fuxi”, “You are beside me” and ” Mutual Fulcrum ” said he could not help but have tears in his eyes, saying, “This is the Chinese Tao, which enters the world of morality through the power of music.”

Just as Bill Gates envisioned his Windows XBox, Musk today envisioned his plan to fly into outer space with Space X, this screenwriter envisioned his short film about Ma Xiaoqiu’s music as X Tao – The Way to the Unknown: The Power of Music.

Dr. Ma Xiaoqiu

On December 9th in Hollywood Hills, Dr. Ma Xiaoqiu, although anxious that she might speak English and have Chinese subtitles, completely trusted professionals to quietly reveal a clip to an audience of a hundred people.

When the time comes, we’ll report on it! Let’s see just how far and how close Hollywood is to China!

Mutual Fulcrum Lyrics: Ma Xiaoqiu Compose: Ma Xiaoqiu

The fulcrum of the sun is the horizon of the moon The fulcrum of the moon is the half of the sun The sun does not rotate without the moon Without the sun, the moon will not move
Your fulcrum is my emotion My fulcrum is your wishes
Years without you I will be lonely Without me your path is lonely
The fulcrum of the sun gives the four seasons

The fulcrum of the moon provides the night and day Your fulcrum and my fulcrum are sails of hope
Your fulcrum and my fulcrum promise the brilliance of tomorrow

The fulcrum of the sun is the horizon of the moon The fulcrum of the moon is the half of the sun The sun does not rotate without the moon Without the sun, the moon will not move
Your fulcrum is my emotion My fulcrum is your wishes
Years without you I will be lonely Without me your path is lonely
The fulcrum of the sun the warmth of the four seasons The fulcrum of the moon supports the night and day Your fulcrum and my fulcrum set up the sail of hope
Your fulcrum and my fulcrum promise the brilliance of tomorrow

The post How far and how close is Hollywood to China? Check out the story of Ma Xiaoqiu… appeared first on Good News!.

THE CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW – (CES) IS THE YEARLY GATHERING WHERE EVERY NEW LIFESTYLE CHANGING TECHNOLOGY IS FIRST SEEN. KATLEAN DE-MONCHY (pronounced KAT-Lean de-MON-shee)… EDITOR IN CHIEF OF NEXTPERT NEWS HAS A PREVIEW OF THE NEW TECHNOLOGY THAT WILL SOON BE ENTERING OUR LIVES.

Katlean is a natively trilingual innovation scout who travels the world to see, find, and show new technologies that will make our life better. First on the scene with her pop-culture trend forecasts, Katlean de Monchy reveals how style and technology are converging to change the way we live today – and tomorrow. On the inside track as she reveals the human side of technology – the stories behind the start-ups and the individuals innovating at a corporate level – Katlean inspires her audience with a fresh, exciting vision for the future.

Sharing trending insights with knowledge and humor, Katlean appears frequently on CNN Clix where she broadcasts directly from CES. She has also been a recognizable presence on, Univision, Fox, Extra, E! and Inside Edition. NEXTPERT REPORT her annual digital trend report, making her a sought-after resource for those who want to be in the know about tech innovations on the horizon in ever industry. As the host and producer of the styleXtech events held during Fashion Week in New York, Katlean gathers top global media and influencers for an experiential showcase demonstrating in real time the most innovative products and tech developments influencing fitness, beauty and fashion, plus how technology is changing style and how style is being embraced by technology.

The post What’s WHAO at CES 2018? CES 2018 package from NeXtpert News – Katlean de Monchy, Click Here for Video & Podcast… appeared first on Good News!.

Dr. Grandin has become a prominent author and speaker on the subject of autism because “I have read enough to know that there are still many parents, and yes, professionals too, who believe that ‘once autistic, always autistic.’ This dictum has meant sad and sorry lives for many children diagnosed, as I was in early life, as autistic. To these people, it is incomprehensible that the characteristics of autism can be modified and controlled. However, I feel strongly that I am living proof that they can” (from Emergence: Labeled Autistic).

Even though she was considered “weird” in her young school years, she eventually found a mentor, who recognized her interests and abilities. Dr. Grandin later developed her talents into a successful career as a livestock-handling equipment designer, one of very few in the world. She has now designed the facilities in which half the cattle are handled in the United States, consulting for firms such as Burger King, McDonald’s, Swift, and others.

Temple Grandin, Ph.D., is now the most accomplished and well-known adult with autism in the world. Her fascinating life, with all its challenges and successes has been brought to the screen. She has been featured onNPR (National Public Radio), major television programs, such as the BBC special “The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow”, ABC’s Primetime Live, The Today Show, Larry King Live, 48 Hours and 20/20, and has been written about in many national publications, such as Time magazine, People magazine, Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, and New York Times.. Among numerous other recognitions by media, Bravo Cable did a half-hour show on her life, and she was featured in the best-selling book, Anthropologist from Mars.

Dr. Grandin presently works as a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. She also speaks around the world on both autism and cattle handling. At every Future Horizons conference on autism, the audience rates her presentation as 10+.

Dr. Grandin’s current bestselling book on autism is The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism and Asperger’s. She also authored Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships, Animals Make us Human, Animals in Translation, Thinking in Pictures, Emergence: Labeled Autistic and produced several DVDs. All books and DVD’s available through Future Horizons.

Temple Grandin’s work continues to inspire millions, drawing superlative reviews such as these:

“Temple is my hero. She has my vote for the person who has provided the greatest advance in our understanding of autism this century.”

-Dr. Tony Attwood, world renowned expert on autism spectrum disorders.

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