Our performance at the Sultana Downrigging Festival in Chestertown, originally scheduled for Sunday, October 28, has been cancelled due to the impending storm. The festival continues on Saturday, but all Sunday activities have been canceled. We’ll look forward to next year. Be well and stay out of harm’s way! — Pam
Well, after many months of traveling to the studio in Silver Spring, coordinating with other musicians, listening, mixing, remixing, working on artwork, coordinating with manufacturers, not to mention, playing, practicing, refining and re-imagining, the new album is available. For those who love to get the physical product in their hands, you can purchase a CD at an upcoming performance, by coming by my house, or ordering online (click on “Music”). Digital natives can download the digital version of the album from this website, or, after November 1, from a variety of online music distributors including Itunes, Amazon and CD Baby. I hope you enjoy these tunes.
Again special thanks to the Kent County Arts Council for providing partial funding for this project. We need to keep supporting the arts or it will be a dull world, indeed.
I am deeply grateful to the Kent County Arts Council for a grant I received to support the release of my new forthcoming album,Rattle Them Chains. The Kent County Arts Council and its Executive Director, Leslie Prince Raimond, have a huge impact on the creative life of the Eastern Shore. As residents we benefit from so much live art – musical, visual, performance and otherwise. I just want to extend my thanks to the Arts Council for this recent grant. I am delighted to have included a number of other Eastern Shore performers on this project including: Ford Schumann, Nevin Dawson, Karen Somerville, Lester Barrett, Jr, Jerome McKinney, Mary Ashley, and of course, Bob and Sofia Ortiz. For a small community, many of us are able to lead rich, creative lives, thanks in part to the seeds planted by our local arts council. Thanks for all you do!
The concert planned for tonight (Saturday) at Adkins Arboretum has been POSTPONED until our rain date, tomorrow, Sunday, September 9, at 6:30. See the performance page for additional information. The event, Living In the Trees, Speaking to the Times features a photographic installation by friend and photographer, Penny Harris, entitled “Night Walk” and our music. We’ll do two sets, but Pam will be talking more about how she writes, and Penny will talk a bit about her work. This will be a nice opportunity to hear more about the creative process from the perspective of two different artists. Living In the Trees, Speaking to the Times. This is a special event with our friend and photographer, Penny Harris. It will feature a photographic installation entitled “Night Walk” and our music. Check out Penny’s website at: http://www.pennyharris.com/. Pam will be joined by Bob Ortiz and Ford Schumann.
Next to playing live music with other musicians, there is nothing that thrills a songwriter’s heart more than knowing you have reached your audience. One of my songs that has had the farthest reach over the years has been The Story of the Wood. Written for my husband, Bob Ortiz, a furniture maker, it has made the round of woodworking circles. Did you know there was a woodworking circle?! Actually, there is a fantastic community of furniture makers, loggers, collectors and wood enthusiasts out there. A friend of my daughter was recently in Maine and visited the Thomas Moser Furniture factory, where she took the picture of this plaque (thanks, KJ!). The song was adopted by Moser and his team in Auburn, Maine — so much so that they carved the words to the song in a gazebo they built on the grounds for their employees. The plaque is from the gazebo. Bob, the kids and I had a chance to visit Moser a few years ago and saw it for ourselves.
Besides being carved in wood, the song has been used in a couple of documentaries, published in magazines, in a book for furniture collectors, and used in a variety of other contexts.
We will have another opportunity to highlight the song at a benefit concert we will be doing in November at the Nakashima Studios in New Hope, PA, to raise funds to permit them to build and send a Peace Table to the Desmond Tutu Peace Center in South Africa. You can click here to learn more about the Nakashima Peace Foundation and the beautiful Peace Tables built to continue a project and vision of furniture maker, George Nakashima, the person who’s work inspired Bob to become a furniture maker. We’ll provide more details about the concert soon, so keep checking back.
Our planned performance this week at Baldwin’s Station in Sykesville, MD, originally scheduled for Thursday, August 2 has been CANCELLED. We hope to book other performances in the area so look for our show calendar on the performance p
On May 12, the Pam Ortiz Band performed a concert at Bob’s furniture shop, in Chestertown, Robert Ortiz Studios, as a part of Bob’s 25th anniversary as an independent furniture maker. We had a great evening with lots of food, friends, and music. Bob opened the evening with several songs including Por Una Cabeza, a Carlos Gardel tango from the 1920s which featured our 13-year old son Daniel on violin, and our 16-year old daughter, Sofia, on mandolin. The Pam Ortiz Band followed, with special guest Mike Buccino on bass. We’ve posted a few videos from the evening on the video page.
Congratulations to Bob on 25 years of great furniture, great art, and staying in the game!
The video page has some new links to live performance videos from our show at the Cellar Stage in Baltimore earlier this month. Bob and I performed as the opener for Bill Staines at the venue hosted by our friend, Joyce Sica. Bob and I met on a stage in 1990 at another venue managed by Joyce in those days, the coffeehouse at the Old Otterbein Church, also in Baltimore. We were delighted to see friends old and new at this performance. The videos were shot by Paul Demmitt. Thanks, Paul, for sharing these videos.
The other day, Bob, Ford, Nevin and I were performing and I choked when it came time to introduce us. I thought we could play on the multisyllabic, ethnic rhythms of the “Pamela Cardullo Ortiz Band.” It worked for Boutros Boutros Ghali and all the NPR reporters (Lourdes Garcia Navarro, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, to name just a couple). Alas, it just doesn’t really work. So, we are planning to go with Pam Ortiz & ______ (something). But we need a name for the band. So, if you want to participate in this effort, go to my Facebook page and weigh in. You can enter your own ideas or vote on someone else’s. Be kind, though. It’s our musical identity you’re dealing with here. We’ll pick the name we like best. The winner will a free copy of our forthcoming album release (of course we haven’t named that yet either!).
Click Here to Go to the Facebook page and submit your entry.
We had a great time this past weekend performing at the Norman James Theatre at Washington College in an afternoon of music to celebrate the civil rights movement and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The program featured about 10 groups including local performers, gospel choirs, and ensembles singing gospel, freedom songs and other music appropriate to the event. Bob (Mr. Beret), Ford Schumann (far right) and I (the short one) were delighted to share the stage with Sombarkin which includes the phenomenal voices of (from left to right) Lester Barrett, Jr., Karen Somerville and Jerome McKinney, with special guest Norvel Thompson. Our set included Lester taking the lead on my song, Rattle Them Chains, and all of us accompanying Bob on Julio Numhauser’s Todo Cambia. Sombarkin followed with a great set of their own. We were honored to be there with so many good friends for a powerful and reflective community celebration.