The splendor of Venice

Michael Becker, president of Innovative Giving Enhancement, a nonprofit public charity, has carefully orchestrated a refined ménage à trois involving music, art and travel. Teaming up with the Rex Foundation, Becker will host a 10-day Music and Art Immersion at the top of the Adriatic Sea in Venice, Italy. Running from October 3 to October 13, the itinerary rivals any other destination vacation because on top of the Italian culture and the architectural beauty of Venice, the Art and Architecture Biennale festivals encompass a fascinating multimedia happening. All of this while finding oneself surrounded by people with aligned interests who are thirsty for culture and adventure.

There will be jam sessions hosted by handpicked musical ambassadors for this tailored 10-day getaway. Peter Rowan, John Kadlecik, Tim Bluhm, Scott Law, Ross James and Amy Helm are among the musical ambassadors who will be diving deep into cross-cultural, genre melting collaboration this year, teaming up with equally skilled European and South American players.

Becker, has put together trips internationally for thirty years. His dedication is reflected in the organization’s mission statement:

“IGE directly supports a range of Venetian and international nonprofit arts foundations, orchestras, educational institutions and music conservatories. Our benefit concert revenue, donations and grants fund cross-cultural musical exploration, international arts education and restoration of historic heritage sites of special cultural or physical significance. In addition and as compliment to direct funding, IGE Musical Ambassadors donate master classes in conservatories worldwide across a range of genres and styles.”

Spots are filling quickly, if you don’t want to miss the boat that floats down the historic Venice canals on a unique, exclusive vacation that will be nearly impossible to recreate. In the following conversation Becker share his perspective on the Music and Art Immersion. You can find more information at www.innogiven.org.

Last year was spent in Venice, why did you decide to return? What was so special about Venice?

We chose Venice for a number of reasons. One of the things we determined was that we wanted to go somewhere there was a festival of some sort, an arts festival. There are two different biennales of note that we attend, one is the art biennale [biennale means every other year] and the other, the architecture biennale. It’s kind of the Olympics of modern art or architecture with approximately 140 countries represented. There are a couple of different exposition grounds at which different nations lease permanently exhibition facilities. It started because I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if I could just take all of my friends to Venice to experience this art together. Just like with music, it’s a lot more fun going with other people.

I tried to figure out how I could do something engaging with a non-profit, benefiting artists, working with artist’s development tying in the cross cultural musical explorations and collaborations we do and I hit upon Venice. In 2013, we formalized the idea and went off with about 40 people, had the time of our lives, came back and discussed with a few folks how we could use the model for benefit of nonprofits. Matt Butler, who is on the Rex board, and a number of other musicians like Scott Law, our musical director and Leonardo Suarez Paz, our artistic director, started figuring out with me how we could create a nonprofit and run Immersion’s for others like Rex, which became our first partner in 2015 and is our current partner for 2016.

Last year we ran an Immersion, we brought an amazing roster of musicians and had the times of our lives. In that period, we became a non-profit and this year we’re going bigger. Conceptually, it’s not just a domestic non-profit that we partner with, which in this case in the Rex foundation, we also have Italian non-profit partners.

One of the things about travel is, it’s easy enough to go somewhere, essentially you’re a tourist and you take from the community. You bring your money, but you just look around, you see things, you eat, but when you leave, aside from the money you’ve spent in their tourist economy, the actual place doesn’t get a lot of benefit from you. We tried to figure out a way everybody could benefit. So when we go, we have local non-profit partners. We’re able to bring all the musicians we bring through the revenue generated by guests and what they pay and we can deploy that incredible world class slate of musicians on behalf of local non-profits. Last year we held benefit concerts for the Palazzo Albrizzi Foundation and the Venice Conservatory of Music. These guys would never ever have an opportunity to field a slate of musicians for a benefit even remotely like this.

How was the collaboration between the American and international musicians, was there a language barrier or a musical barrier that interfered?

Everyone speaks a little bit of English. As for the musical collaboration, what was the most remarkable experience for our guests, the staff and the players, was not only collaboration among musicians of a similar discipline, but, also across multiple genres. The program we fielded last time was for benefit of the Venice Conservatory of Music, one of the oldest music conservatories in the western world, and the Palazzo Albrizzi Foundation. We work with the Conservatory on the restoration of their educational facilities because it’s an ancient palazzo and the violinists have to play in the winter with gloves. The Albrizzi houses some of the most magnificent frescoes in Italy.

So we did two concerts for them. One was called Music of the Americas: North to South —it was a tour of music of the Americas starting with Americana, music of the Grateful Dead, John Kadlecik originals, Scott Law originals, as well as originals from our Italian bluegrass Americana guys. Then we worked our way through jazz, samba, bossanova and tango. The way we do that is thanks to my artistic director Leonardo Suarez Paz, considered by many to be among the greatest violinists of his generation. He’s collaborated with Wynton Marsalis, he works with Jazz at Lincoln Center, and he is a multiple Grammy winner with his own group Cuartetango as well as with other artists.

We have a range of European and South American musical ambassadors, these all come to us through our illustrious board. Not only do we go with a slate of eight musicians or more, but we have probably 20 European superstars ranging from classical to jazz to tango, all the way up to jam and Americana. That slate that you see is only a partial slate of the folks that join us in Venice. Shockingly there’s a bluegrass and Americana community in Italy and when they heard we were having all the guys last time, they flocked down to Venice to jam and play.

All of these guys have European bands. For example, our bluegrass guys in Italy, guys like Martino Coppo and Paola Bonfanti – when Peter Rowan goes to Europe, that’s his band. One of the ways the model works economically is not by just simply taking all the players but by having our European Ambassadors join us. If you were touring Europe it would be hard to take an entire band but you can bring a couple of your players and fill it out.
 

Toasting Tim Bluhm, IGE style!

Scott Law is your musical director and you have musical ambassadors John Kadlecik and Tim Bluhm, what’s their involvement in the 10-day excursion and how do you get to be a musical ambassador?

There are a lot of players out there but not every player has interpersonal skills necessary to hang for 10 days with thirty plus guests. We chose our ambassadors, like John and Tim, not only for the quality of their music and what they’ve brought and given back to the community, but also whether or not they are able to effectively collaborate with all of the participants in our immersions. From the musician’s point of view, they get to put their bags down, they get to do this cross cultural thing and we don’t rehearse them to death. We compensate our musical ambassadors generously. When we say we’re honoring these artists, we really are.

We also have a tour now because our international ambassadors are putting it together for us. Rather than having to contend with booking agents and all the other things we would have to do to set up a tour we’re able to avoid much of that as well as many expenses. Many of the players are going off to tour in Europe with the European guys for the first time and when they come back to the states, our guys set them up. We’re trying to create opportunities for the artists. We’re actually a very inexpensive holiday, if you look at trips in Venice for 10 days and the kinds of accommodations we provide, and no other trip has so very much subsidiary programming. Because we’re non-profit, beyond our direct expenses there is a tax deduction and while in Venice, your being there permits us to give to the community. The idea is trying to come up with a plan where every single person involved wins.

The way it works is normally the jams are usually led by a musician. For example, if it’s going to be Tim leading the jam, he would start with his own stuff. They’d play some Mother Hips stuff, some of his own compositions and that’s the first set. Then the second set becomes more of a jam. We have Amy Helm coming this year, so Amy will lead one. Scott Law will lead one. Martino Coppo and Paulo Bonfanti will lead one. The jams are sort of a survey, where we start with one kind of music and move through to something else and demonstrate how these styles are linked. We have those particular types of programs and then we have the more formal concerts. We have a gala we do for Palazzo Albrizzi which is a dress up affair. That program will be developed by Scott as the music director. Our immersion is over on October 13th and at that point, the way we envision it now, our guests, musicians and others will jump on a bus and then do a four night tour of northern Italy doing benefits for non-profits in different cities, for whatever the local charities we select.

The itinerary seems amazing too, especially traveling to a different country, it can be daunting and you don’t want to do all of the tourist-y things. You have on the docket a pasta making class, jams at night, the wine and castle tour, the Dolomite Mountains, etc., did you come up with this?

I was a teacher putting together travel trips for kids internationally for thirty years. It’s not a big stretch, we’re just talking about big kids now. Again, why Venice? Venice is an island and if you’re on foot you’re not leaving the Lagoon. The lack of car is an enormous benefit to us, nobody has to get in a car, everybody’s walking around. Venice has this incredible festival with which we are informally associated, but, we are working toward more active partnership with the biennale. It’s easy to travel— and some magnificent cities like Venice, if you just go, it’s like going to a museum. How much time can you spend at the actual museum? It’s just not contextualized. On our Immersions, not only do we have the museum city to inhabit, but there’s also the art or architecture biennale, the world class exposition of art or architecture – and we can experience it together. Then, of course we have our own unique crazy IGE overlay on top of it. With all of these things going on, the synergy of it is mind boggling. Of course we have a range of add on adventures. Our current favorite is the kayaking expedition among the canals or even to the islands of Murano and Burano.

It’s fun to experience things together and in particular, music, art and adventure. People are there because this is a non-profit experience where they understand that not only are they having the time of their life but they’re benefiting artists and benefitting the community.

The guest, musician and the artist interactions must end in long lasting friendships being formed. Do you have any stories from the last time you were in Venice?

Oh, it’s lifelong. You can’t spend 10 days having these experiences without getting super tight and that’s part of it, it’s a big family. Everybody is in touch, very much so, half of the folks who signed up already are repeats. They all want to go and feel very fortunate. It’s super intimate and pretty exclusive. Mostly anyone who looks at our site innogiven.org and reads through it knows it’s not Bonnaroo, although that would be fun too. There are lifelong friendships and connections to this community. A lot of the folks who come have been fans of these musicians forever and they’ve never been backstage, suddenly they’re living among those musicians.
I’m sure you’ve had tons of noteworthy happenings in the past few years, can you talk a about some of those?

There’s a lot of planned stuff but the spontaneous stuff is remarkable. One of the partnerships we’re forming is with the original Jewish Ghetto dating from the 1500’s. We’re going to be partnering with other foundations to do benefits to help restore it. We were up there and we were filming, putting a movie together. We were just in an alley, it was JK, Scott, Ross James and a bunch of other guys and we were just jamming and a head pops up. One of our guests looked at him and said, “Oh my God, I know who that it is.” It turned out it was one of Iran’s most famous percussionists who is in exile. He is so famous that he was recognized immediately by the Iranian guy in our group. It was exciting, he invited us in. It turned out he had a little club, this hole in the wall, and we wound up being able to jam there and he sat in with us. It was an opportunity to have a jam session with a super prominent international superstar percussionist. That’s the kind of spontaneous thing that happens that’s just not going to happen to you otherwise. We’ve had rooftop concerts where I’m walking around Venice and I hear music and suddenly realize it’s “Terrapin Station” and that they’re on the roof of a palazzo.

Looking through the reviews it seems to have made an impact on many different people, that’s got to feel great.

Oh yeah, talk about inspiration. People come and they don’t know what to expect. In a couple of hours they realize they’ve landed exactly where they want to be. I find it hard to justify travel sometimes and increasingly so do others – and I love travel. Unless I am able to bring a direct benefit to the communities I’m going into, it’s not quite as interesting to me. Now there are very definite and evident benefits that your participation on this trip brings not only to our domestic partners such as Rex, but also to our international partners. You have this incredible trip, you get your tax deduction, it’s less expensive and more fun than any other trip you’re going to take and then you come home and you realize that you’ve actually contributed.

What we’re hoping for is to build this. We’re going to continue in Venice but we also have other plans. One of the things we’re trying to do is to create jobs, not just for the musicians, but for the other people. We’d like to be able to staff Venice for about six months a year running program after program. As we move out we’re looking at Havana, Prague, and various other places with festivals. We need a festival backdrop and we need a city that is small enough so that you don’t lose one another. Venice is our home base presently, it works very well for us. We have contacts and folks that live there and players and venues, so it’s a beautiful place for us to go. We have yet to determine the next step, but we’re thinking potentially Havana.