Bill Blue, Mike McAdam and collected friends from our 100th IYE show
To our JAMinc family …
On behalf of our board of directors, let me extend sincere season’s greetings and our thanks for your support of our efforts over the past year, in whatever way that might have come. Our mission of sharing quality music with our community continues. Our board roster at year’s end includes Jim Bland, Andy Garrigue, Joe Gianfortoni, Kay Landry, Justin Laughter, Bill Rice, Wally Thulin, Samson Trinh and myself. We are committed to the continuation of our 14-year In Your Ear concert series that last May marked its 100th performance with RVA favorites Bill Blue and Mike McAdam. The show sold out in less than 24 hours.
Our Studio A concerts this year also featured Turkish pop from Yeni Nostalji, Latin bolero from Miramar, singer/songwriter Joe Crookston, and Boston’s Novel Ideas. We began our fall season with Chicago-based Irish band Bua, then a return of jazz piano sensation Justin Kauflin and finally veteran blues duo Paul Rishell and Annie Raines in late November. All these artists played at least two school outreach shows, an important part of what we do, and the number of children touched by our initiative is now well over 90,000 since our concert series began in 2004. And we continue to present our public radio program In Your Ear on WCVE Music that airs at noon on Saturdays during the fall and spring and features highlights of our recorded concerts. We’ve done 61 shows so far and all are archived for streaming at www.ideastations.org/iye.
JAMinc also provided tech support and transportation for the artists performing in public and private schools during the Richmond Folk Festival, though we were forced to cancel half our scheduled appearances this year due to Hurricane Michael. JAMinc is privileged to be part of sharing this amazing world music with our community. We were also proud to present the 4th annual Scott Street Five String Finals during the Folk Festival, a youth banjo contest in memory of our former board member, attracting talented players from far and wide. 1st place finishers in both the bluegrass and clawhammer divisions received a handsome crystal trophy and all six finalists took home generous cash prizes, thanks to the Street family.
JAMinc is a true 501(c)(3) non-profit. Our directors are unpaid and all our concert proceeds and other contributions support our artists and the school outreach program. You might consider the gift of appreciated stocks or your 401/k required minimum distributions to help us fulfill our mission and decrease your tax burden. Please contact me with any questions as to how this could work for all of us: info@jaminc.org. And making a simple monetary gift is easy via PayPal or your charge card online.
We’re deeply grateful for your interest in what JAMinc strives to do, sharing the ideal that music and the arts are a vital part of what makes life worth living.
We wish you all the joys of the holiday season …
Tim Timberlake, President