artists-for-artists:
the creative revolution
business model: artists own and control their work, direct marketing makes artists instead of corporations the main benefactors of their work
pr model: the right thing might also be the rational thing to do:
community spirit as a means of spreading the word


'if this is madness, there's method in it...' - Shakespeare, Hamlet



method to the madness
there’s a war going on. supposedly, it’s the keepers of the true faith in a world of decay, the Good, against those who feel the urgent need for improvement and change, the Good...
but what it is really always about is our afflicted and struggling souls falling prey to our inherited instincts of survival in a world of evolutionary struggle for resources. for ages, this struggle has been about material resources. in a world which has become somewhat more civilized and affluent, we now compete for emotional resources, but perpetuating the misery of the human condition.

as artists, we believe that aesthetics should not be a means to exclude and polarize, but to include and inspire. in this spirit, the music on this album is performed by musicians hailing from as many different cultural as musical traditions in ever-varying constellations. the substance of the proven meets, mingles and toys with the urgency of the new, the yet illegitimate.
we hope that these recordings may not only be a document of our respective artistic developments, but also be understood as a wholehearted endorsement of the spirit of Martin Luther King’s memorable words:

“If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspecive. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world. We must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.”

with remarkably little effort, many entrenched divisions are being bridged here: young master musicians from all continents prove that, as the cliché has, there indeed is an international language, spoken by all who care enough to not mind the effort to seek what unites us rather than to indulge our competitive instincts, who understand that our mere humanity makes us all the same.

If we try to let our every action, our every thought be guided by love and not by fear, and if we don’t give in to our reflexes to afflict others as the world has afflicted us, our reward shall be the soothing of our longing for a sense of purpose, knowing that we may leave the world a little better than we found it.

- torsten de winkel

 


links: associated artists

nyjg - the musicians' own

From New Orleans to Coltrane, from Schumann to Hip-Hop and beyond: award-winning guitarist Torsten de Winkel, fed up with the music biz machine, joined forces with New York cultural exiles from all continents to establish the new york jazz guerrilla international artist network. This collaborative effort of some of the world’s most gifted young musicians, all of which have been featured in the groups of such leading artists as Pat Metheny, Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Zawinul, John McLaughlin, Airto, Roy Hargrove, D'Angelo and many others provides its members with a platform to release a broad scope of exciting and heartfelt music inspired by a multitude of contemporary styles and true to the artists' vision on the artist-run label nyjg.

The new york jazz guerrilla’s music does not stand for or against any tradition, but promotes an enlightened pleasure principle, sets its own standard based merely on the artists’ intuition. It does not conform to the narrow confines neither of the traditionalist nor the ‘avantgarde’ camp - anything goes, provided it is authentic to the artists. It represents the open-mindedness of a new generation of jazz musicians who grew up with the Beatles and Hip-Hop no less than with Trane and Bird or Bartók, musicians who feel little urge to perpetuate hostility towards other stylistic 'camps' but instead embrace these for inspiration.


for orders and other inquiries,
please write to webmaster@nyjg.orgnospam (remove the 'nospam' part of the address!)



to be added to our humanitarian action mailing list, please write to
TheHumanityProject@nyjg.orgnospam (remove the 'nospam' part of the address!)

 

the nyjg supports
amnesty international and greenpece