Mariana Fitzpatrick

What an exciting adventure we had in New York this week! We interviewed a brother and sister, David Amram and Mariana Amram Fitzpatrick, who were friends with Noel and Deb Davis since childhood and spent summers at the shore at Long Beach Island near Atlantic City. An extra special treat was having Chris Davis, Noel Rockmore's son with us helping do the interviews. We learned so many fascinating things about the Davis family and Noel Rockmore that we will share in a video at a later date.

 

David Amram went on to become an American composer, musician, conductor, and writer. As a classical composer and virtuoso performer, his integration of jazz (including being one of the first noted as an improvising jazz French hornist), ethnic and folk music has led him to work with the likes of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Willie Nelson, Langston Hughes, Charles Mingus, Leonard Bernstein, Sir James Galway, Tito Puente, Miles Davis, Pete Seeger, Elia Kazan, Odetta, Dustin Hoffman, Steve Allen, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Hunter Thompson, Johnny Depp and Jack Kerouac throughout the course of his career.

 

We read his book Vibrations and spent 3 hours watching David Amram You Tube videos to prepare for the interview. These three are our favorites and a great example of David's many styles as he steals the show with Dizzy Gillespie with a double flute jazz performance, leads 80,000 Farm Aid attendees in a song composed on the spot and conducts a symphony in which he also plays the flute. In each of these videos David captures the hearts of his fellow performers and then the audience. David is 81 now and performs all across the world like he was 50.

 

Chris David Tee Rich

Best of all he loved Rockmore and he is onboard with helping us get the word out (he knows everyone) and offered to lecture and perform at a future date. He composed the score for the Manchurian Candidate, Splendor in the Grass, and Pull my Daisy with Jack Kerouac and he was intrigued with the idea of doing a score for a future Rockmore movie. 

 

The eBay Auctions continue this weekend with only with 6 works being offered on Saturday at 10PM and none on Sunday. We will see how it goes moving forward and what our schedules will allow as we start to shift into high gear.

 

Rich & Tee & Shirley Marvin

The Noel Rockmore Project Team- email link

The New Website -www.rockmore.org

 

PS. Special Thanks to Nephew Joe & Sam who let us stay in their apartment in Queens so we could do the Amram interviews.