Jazz musicians, Charles and Delores Fambrough, graciously stepped in to represent the Black Nations and delighted the crowd with jazz standards, improvisations and original Etudes, written by Charles, who is well-known for his upright bass work with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Delores’s smoky vocals were a well-seasoned accoutrement to Charles’s smooth and lush bass lines.

Dibyarka Chatterjee shared his indigenous traditions from India by performing ragas and various improvisational, complex rhythms upon his Tablas. The droning harmonium, which was his only accompaniment, gave an appropriate meditative feeling to this set. He also explained some of the many beautiful yogic traditions from his country that deepen the life of a serious musician, which Dibyarka has been since being initiated by his father, Pandit Samir Chatterjee, at five years of age.

The mime performances of Italian-American, Janet Carafa, gave us great pause, as she demonstrated, without a doubt, that we can understand one another through the languages of expression, movement and intention, within the tapestry of music. Her dynamic “Out of the Box” provided a highlight, advancing our imaginations into visualizing the Mime’s eventual freedom from her life-sized square confines while a taped Herbie Hancock piece laid a musical backdrop. The performance of Jackie Tice’s Native Flute piece, Crow Talk, was given flight by Janet’s mimed interpretation of a bird learning to fly for the first time.

Jackie Tice, founder of All Nations Peace, used her Native American Flute to open the concert by facing the Four Directions as World Peace Flags from each direction were brought to the stage by audience volunteers. Monica Willard, who is the UN Representative for the United Religions Initiative, served as the liaison for both this part of the event and the ending, urging us to remember each country’s struggles and to repeat, “May Peace Prevail On Earth.”

During Jackie’s individual performance, she played Flute songs from her newest CD, MorningSky Drum Song and an old favorite, Blue Coyote. She also performed a guitar-based song with Dibyarka Chatterjee on Tablas, adding a nice counterpoint to her 7/4 vocal rhythms, repeating “Any Little Bit of Love You Can Show,” which wrapped up the sentiment of this evening’s concert and the entrance into another year of All Nations Peace.

PERFORMING ARTISTS:

• Jackie Tice — award–winning songwriter and founder of All Nations Peace
  
• Charles Fambrough — this renowned jazz bassist has worked with many greats: Art Blakey, Winton and Branford Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, McCoy Tyner, Roland Kirk, Max Roach, Horace Silver and many others.
  
• Dibyarka Chatterjee — Composer and Tabla player from India,
  son and student of world-reknown, Samir Chatterjee.
  
• Janet Carafa — mime and movement artist and founder of The Yoga of Mime;
   student of the incomparable Marcel Marceau