Looking Back on a Year of Listening Up...
A wrap-up of me and my music newsletters and initiatives in 2024
It feels sometimes like looking back is a trap. What’s in the rearview is gone, you’ve moved past, so why bother to glance there at all? But the past is prologue Shakespeare so wisely said in The Tempest, illuminating the path forward if we allow ourselves to learn the lessons that presented themselves along the way.
On this second day of the year 2025, I am bound and determined to look back with rose-colored glasses, wrapping things up with a bow (or in the fuzzy scarf, hat and coat combo that is cracking me up this winter.) Why not look at all we did do, not what we didn’t? A friend recalls someone suggesting she create a celebratory Ta-Da! list rather than a stressful To-Do, writing down what she managed to accomplish rather than searching the brain for all she could do but might not. I love that.
So here it is, my ListenUp NYC Ta-Da! for 2024…
When I set out just over a year ago to write this newsletter, calling it ListenUp NYC to get New Yorkers to tune in to the AMAZING music scene and all that it brings, I imagined all that it could be. I imagined getting all of you and many more to join me in all the fabulous music venues across NYC. I imagined interviewing hordes of uber-talented musicians, for articles and podcasts. I imagined hiring teams of young people to run special events and tours of the music scene, to write and interview. ListenUpNYC was going to take the city, no THE WORLD, by storm:)
Well…what I DID DO (Ta-Da!) was to put out 54 newsletters featuring weekly calendars filled with nightly events with some of NYC’s greatest musicians in some of the world’s greatest venues. I went to dozens of shows, took pics and videos to share here, wrote about the power of music and about some of my very fave artists.
I interviewed some very cool cats for articles, and managed to do a handful of fun podcasts with some extraordinarily talented folks, helped along by sound engineer Jillian Crapanzano. If you didn’t tune in then, you can listen to them here. These are fun, intimate conversations with highly inspirational people, so I highly recommend tuning in:)
Clockwise from top left, links to podcasts with: flautist/composer/choreographer Annie Nikunen, pianist Leo Genovese , Louisville Leopards Percussionists’ Diane Downs, saxophonist Stacy Dillard.
I hatched a plan for a cross-country “Harmony” tour seeking out music in cities on the Southerly route to Los Angeles and, boy, did I find it, along with great food and great people.
One of my most memorable evenings was at the Blue Canoe in Tupelo, Mississippi. I can still clearly taste the fried black-eyed peas and fried onions out of a jelly jar, how the pork and collard greens and polenta played together in my mouth as the singers sang…
It was amazing to ferret out the music scene in some great cities, including Nashville and New Orleans. Traveling alone across this beautiful country, meeting up with friends and strangers, looking for soul-filling music and community was an incredible experience, one that I hope to repeat again as often as possible. It expands the mind and creates an opening for possibilities well beyond those we might be able to imagine if we stay closer to home, hearing about and potentially fearing these strange Other places and people. Other that isn’t so Other on closer inspection I’ve found.
In that same vein, 2024 brought me inside a place I’d heard much about but never been. As a longtime supporter of Musicambia, I decided to try my hand at produce and co-directing a documentary project I’m calling Harmony Inside & Out about music education efforts inside Sing Sing Correctional Facility, and about some of the men formerly incarcerated there who speak and perform on behalf of the organization and other music programs they were part of while inside Sing Sing.
Here is a short 15-minute sample of some of our footage. Credit goes to Dmitri Borysevicz for cinematography and co-direction; to Gabriel Cyr for sound engineering; and to Frances Henderson for editing. Stay tuned for ways to support our effort to continue work on this important documentary and support music programs for the incarcerated, for whom even this short piece will surely show how necessary and life-saving music can be.
I continue to offer my Sacred Bloom sound baths at various yoga studios and at my home studios in Brooklyn and upstate. Sign up to get updates on events or reach out for private sessions at sacredbloomtribe.com. In December I partnered with bassist Ari Folman-Cohen for a duo we dubbed “Deeper Roots,” which got rave reviews from participants. “I went someplace else…I needed that!” Stay tuned for other collabs with Ari and others in the weeks to come.
Though I stopped putting out my weekly calendar a while back, I still try to see great music as much as possible! In the last gasp of 2024, I was able to make it out to see some of my fave musicians, including Ravi Coltrane playing uptown at Smoke Jazz Club, Super Yamba band at my local Barbes, and Living Language at the always-fabulous Bar LunAtico. See below for video clips of these great evenings, hoping they will inspire you to see these folks and many more across the great musical hub of New York City this year.
Ravi Coltrane & Friends…
Super Yamba Band…
Living Legend…
Thanks for your support this past year! I have enjoyed offering glimpses into the myriad ways that music affects my life and the lives of others, and will continue to do so moving forward. Stay tuned for events and new offerings from ListenUp NYC…
In Peace & Harmony,
Steph Thompson