Music for Food is excited to present a community concert in partnership with Homecoming NYC, Open Space Music, and The Dream Unfinished as part of Homecoming’s food crawl in Jackson Heights, an event which explores the neighborhood’s incredible diversity and connects participants with the restaurants, food pantries, and organizations serving their communities. This crawl will feature five restaurants that represent the spirit, culture, and vibrancy of Jackson Heights: New York City’s most diverse neighborhood. Each ticket sold will bring business to the partner restaurants and includes a donation to Community Center Services Organization Corp (CSOC). The community concert is free and open to the public, and any additional donations will be sent to CSOC.
Lineup
1:30pm (12pm food crawl) Hyeyung Sol Yoon, violin and Gregory Beaver, cello
2:30pm (1pm food crawl) Hyeyung Sol Yoon, violin and Gregory Beaver, cello
3:30pm (2pm food crawl) Chez Cherie with Jasmine, voice and Joey Chang, piano
4:30pm (3pm food crawl) Chez Cherie with Jasmine, voice and Joey Chang, piano
5:30pm (4pm food crawl) Rafael Leal Ramirez, percussion and Jeffrey Ernst, piano
6:30pm (5pm food crawl) Rafael Leal Ramirez, percussion and Jeffrey Ernst, piano
Artists
Hyeyung Sol Yoon
Hyeyung Sol Yoon (she/her) was a violinist of the Chiara Quartet which celebrated its last season in 2018. They launched “Chamber Music in Any Chamber,” a project that brought the ensemble to over 50 clubs and bars across the U.S. and performed by heart including the Complete String Quartets of Béla Bartók at the Ravinia Festival in 2016. Discography includes recording of Jefferson Friedman’s String Quartets, which was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2011, and Bartók by Heart, the Complete String Quartets of Béla Bartók, released in 2016. She traveled to South Korea in Spring 2019 to research folk practices called madang performances and is the founder of Asian Musical Voices of America (AMVA), a platform to create community among Asians working and creating in classical music in the U.S. and to uplift BIPOC experiences within the field. She is also, along with her husband cellist Gregory Beaver, a co-founder of Open Space Music, a music event series whose mission is to create a multicultural space and fading away boundaries between artists and participants.
Gregory Beaver
Cellist of the Chiara String Quartet for 18 years, Gregory Beaver performed over 500 concerts in concert halls on 3 continents, garnered a Grammy nomination, premiered 40 works, and recorded 7 major albums. In 2016, the quartet presented all 6 of Béla Bartók’s string quartets memorized in a 2 day period at the Ravinia Festival and regularly performed concerts with the quartet by heart. Gregory has composed several works for solo cello, duo, choir, and other ensembles and is working on a requiem for choir and full orchestra addressing gun violence in America. He is also a Senior Software Engineer Braze, Inc., where he exercises creativity in code. He lives with his wife, violinist Hyeyung Yoon, 2 daughters and cat in Jersey City, NJ. He plays on a fine Roman cello made in 1725 by David Tecchler.
Chez Cherie
Chez Cherie is an improvisation-based duo featuring vocalist Jasmine R. Wilson and pianist Joey (Ian-Joe) Chang. Together they perform radically original stories infusing classical music, R&B, spoken word and free jazz. Ardent interdisciplinary artists, Chez Cherie creates extensively with dancers, actors, visual artists, and animators. The multicultural duo thoughtfully interweaves their African American and Asian American heritages to intimately communicate with audiences. In a time when marginalized people can feel especially isolated, Chez Cherie explores creating a space for solidarity and healing through art.
Rafael Leal Ramirez
With over 40 years of experience as a percussionist, drummer, educator, producer and composer, Rafael Leal Ramierez’s musical career has been developed through a diversity of projects in both Colombia and the United States. Throughout his career, he has played, toured, and recorded with the Joe Madrid Jazz Trio, the Bogotá Jazz Ensemble, the groups Noches de Liverpool and Blue Jean Blues, artists such as Pacho Zapata, Jorge Zapata, Edna Rocio, Claudia de Colombia, Oscar Golden, Raul Santi, Gali Galiano in his native country Colombia. Mr. Ramirez has extensive experience teaching at Universidad Pedagógica, Universidad EAN, and Taller Musical Francisco Cristancho, in Bogota. He has conducted workshops at institutions such as The New School, the Colombian Consulate, and the Queens Museum and Flushing Town Hall. He’s currently involved with the educational project, FolkCOLOMBIA Escuela de Danza y Música, an initiative promoting Colombian culture through music and dance, with the support of the nonprofit Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York City.
Jeffrey Ernst
Born on October 5th, 1967, in West Islip, New York, and currently based out of Briarwood, Queens, Jeff has worked as performer (piano/keboards, vocals), composer and instructor in NY and Berlin, Germany. In addition to attending SUNY at Purchase and Five Towns College, Jeffrey has studied Privately with Reggie Moore, Norman Pors, Michael Cochraine, Cornelia Moore, and Elio Supcic. Jeffrey has performed at the Box Bar (Grand Hyatt Hotel) and the Blu (AIDA cruise lines) in Europe and the Westbury Manor, Sayville Inn and Yer Man’s Pub (Formely Cooper’s Ale house) in NY. After performing over 7 years with Rocmitzvah (around the three- state area, based in Westchester) and two years with the Bay Big Band (based in Lindenhurst/Amityville, Long Island) Jeffrey played 1 & ½ years with Irish entertainer Tommy Flynt, also in the three-state area. Jeffrey has taught at the Day Jams national summer day camps, 2007-2011, in addition to having previously taught in the SUNY Purchase Summer Music Camp, Oceanside music School and Palomba Academy of Music, all in NY.
Our Partners
Homecoming
Homecoming is a community-led organization working to support food security for New Yorkers by driving business to local New York restaurants. We organize restaurant crawls that explore the incredible diversity of Queens neighborhoods and connect them with the food pantries and organizations serving their communities.
Open Space Music
Open Space Music envisions a space where the boundaries between groups of people, including artists and audience, fade away inspiring freedom of expression. We create a village of multiethnic and multicultural groups of people and lift up diverse voices and cultures through their presence in programming and community. Open Space Music was co-founded in 2020 by violinist Hyeyung Sol Yoon and cellist Gregory Beaver as an online concert series that provided connection during physical distancing caused by the pandemic.
The Dream Unfinished
The Dream Unfinished is an activist orchestra. Its mission is to use classical music as a platform to engage audiences in dialogues surrounding social and racial justice. TDU has people of color in the orchestra, in the music, behind the scenes, and in the audiences. We are an orchestra that looks and sounds like New York City, and through music, we explore pressing social issues affecting our communities.