Planet Orchestra Performing for Foundation Board Members on October 19th, 2012 What happens when you combine curious kids, eager parents and a whole bucket load of orchestral instruments? You get planet Orchestra. Los Angeles South Bay Awesome Foundation (yes, that’s a mouthful isn’t it?) was excited to the brim to award it’s second grant to a growing group of devoted musicians based out of Lawndale California. These musicians aren’t your ordinary orchestra, they are youth that are given free lessons, an instrument and (most valuable of all) a nurturing environment in which “to come together to achieve the common good of making music.” Planet orchestra has grown, from its inception in 2010 with a group of eight children, to a thriving group of professional musicians, volunteers, parents and children. Based in Lawndale, Planet Orchestra has grand ideas and does not plan to stop with just a few lessons to a few kids. This energetic group of social entrepreneurs hopes to use its existing system to spring board into school classrooms, dance studios, and (in the words of Buzz Lightyear) to infinite and beyond! There’s little doubt that Planet Orchestra will continue to impact lives and make our world a… read more →
The National Marrow Donor Program really really really needs more minorities (who are harder to match) and more young people (whose cells make for more successful transplants) to register as potential bone marrow donors. BE THE MATCH ON CAMPUS is their push to make this happen, at 35 colleges and universities in SoCal – including UCLA on 10/24. Besides having to convince college students that it’s really NOT as scary as you think to be a donor, BE THE MATCH also has to pay for testing all these guys – and it’s not cheap. So the LA chapter of The Awesome Foundation is giving this month’s 1K awesome grant to BE THE MATCH ON CAMPUS to pay for 40 UCLA students to be put on the national registry — and hopefully be the match for the someone who needs it. xoxo The Awesome Foundation
Dave Adams is not a musician. But he’s a devoted believer in music’s power to inspire creativity, community and emotion. So one day, Dave bought a used guitar, gave it away to someone who could use it to make music — and started The Acoustic Guitar project. Dave’s conditions: 1. The musician has one week to record an original song using only a used acoustic guitar and a handheld recorder provided by The Acoustic Guitar Project. No editing or post-production is allowed. 2. When the musician is finished, they sign the guitar, take a picture of themselves with it, and choose the next musician to participate. The guitar travels to a new musician every week, becoming a viral memento. Today, the first traveling acoustic guitar is with its eighteenth owner in New York City. Every week a newborn song appears at http://theacousticguitarproject.com as a free download, along with lyrics, photos, and candid interviews with the songwriter. A second guitar has been making the rounds in Helsinki, starting with the Finland winner of the Eurovision Song Contest, one of Europe’s most popular TV shows. Singer-songwriters of all stripes have crafted heartfelt ballads and bluesy riffs. No two songs are the same… read more →
How would you describe a project that is part immersive theater, part designer kidnapping, and totally top secret? Awesome. That’s how. Wanderlust rendezvous: Oct. 6th, 7 pm sharp. Our agent will find you on the north end of the High Line, 30th St. & 10th Ave. Sturdy shoes/warm clothes/flashlight. That brief and cryptic text message was all we received before everything went down. My partner-in-crime and I gather with 5 other couples on the top of the High Line on a brisk early October evening. At 7, our agent arrives dressed in dapper 70s vintage gear and holding an orange Igloo beverage jug. He introduces himself as Fox and asks us if we are there for the couples retreat. We say yes. A couple of confused tourists say “no” and scamper off. Fox leads us down the stairs of the High Line to street level, where we board a big hippie RV named Harvey Love Muscle. Destination? Unknown. “We can’t tell you, but it’s about 2 hours from the City.” Ok. Sure. Just go with the flow. That’s part of the fun of it all. After a brief stop for gas, there’s nothing left to do but sit back, relax,… read more →
Whew! Been awhile since we posted up here. Tim Hwang reporting live from Awesome Foundation San Francisco. We’re thrilled to announce today that we’ve officially awarded September fellowships to not one, but two projects of a great deal of awesomeness. Both are performances, and both coming up in the next month or so. First, huge congratulations to Julie Crossman and her posse of Excellence for her project The Golden Hour, a brand-new branch of the wildly successful series of live late night talk shows Oakland Nights Live (and the obligatory Facebook page). The show will be held the third Saturday of every month in a venue to be determined in San Francisco — past performances have included skits, performances, interviews and Julie’s dad. So, we’re basically very much pumped for the whole thing – it’s looking like the first show will be sometime in mid-September. Our second award goes to Mike Lai and his proposal for a Sonic Kung Fu Battle. Which is…sort of tough to explain. But when you see the video, you’ll understand why we funded them. They’re planning on performing a substantially scaled up live version of their voice-powered sound effect street battle performance for the ZERO1 Biennial happening Sept 14-16th. Congratulations to… read more →