SIUSLAW NEWS ❚ WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2017
G ARDEN C LUB BRING’ S
RECYCLING TO F LORENCE
Trash, garbage and the
unusable are pure joy to
BRING Recycling of Eugene.
BRING, one of the nation's
oldest non-profit recycling
organizations,
encourages
people to rethink what they
use and what they throw away.
Florence Garden Club wel-
comes Emily Shelton, BRING
Recycling's
Education
Manager, as their featured
R ECOGNIZED
BY
5 A
H EALTHY D IRECTIONS
speaker to their Wednesday,
Oct. 11 meeting at 1 p.m. at
the Presbyterian Church of the
Siuslaw located at 3996 Hwy
101 N. The presentation will
be free to the public.
From selling used building
materials, to teaching kids the
4-Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle,
rethink), BRING helps Lane
County residents live well
without waste.
Peace Health volunteers
to meet for luncheon
Peace Harbor PeaceHealth
Volunteers
will
meet
Thursday, Oct. 19, at
11:30a.m., for their monthly
luncheon and business meet-
ing at the Florence Event
Center.
Guest speaker will be
Debbie
Grant
from
PeaceHealth Riverbend’s Pet
Therapy Program.
Those interested in attend-
ing should RSVP to Jo Ann
Wilson at 541-902-9780 no
later than Oct. 12. Lunch is $5
for volunteers and $10 for
guests.
Many different volunteer
opportunities are available,
including in the hospital gift
shop, the front lobby, same-
day surgery and healing blan-
kets. Volunteers also work
with programs such as
Hospice, No One Dies Alone
(NODA)
and
Patient
Advocacy.
These opportunities provide
a meaningful and rewarding
volunteer experience.
For more information on
volunteering at Peace Harbor,
call president Nancy Johnson
at 541-997-8813.
COURTESY PHOTO
Healthy Directions Coalition Chair Char Reavis (center right)) recently presented a Florence Area Family Friendly
certificate to 1285 Restobar owners Kurt and Kelley Hargens and executive chef Scott Murray.
They percussed ’till folks reached convivial cacophany
Airto Moreira
Band
Review
B Y B URNEY G ARELICK
O
in Our Community.
Thank You.
www.edwardjones.com
Member SIPC
Western Lane
Ambulance District
Invites You to
LEARN
CPR
ct. 7 was no quiet
night of quiet stars
when this Brazilian
jazz icon beat a path to the
Florence Events Center with
his intrepid band of renown.
Imagine Henry David
Thoreau, sitting in his cabin
beside that pond, listening for
the sound of a different drum-
mer when... Crash! Bam!
Alakazam!
Along comes Airto
Moreira. Up jumps reclusive
Henry to exclaim,“OMG. It’s
civil disobedience!”
And it was, at least for
those of us who like our jazz
to swing with melody and
harmony, because it don't
mean a thing if it ain't got
that swing.
But jazz is nothing if not
improvisational.
Airto is no spring chicken,
or Amazon parrot, as the case
may be. At age 76, he’s still
improvising and exploring the
myriad sounds of music.
Something of a prodigy, he
was beating the drum and
singing at age 3 and turned
professional at age 13. In
1967, he drummed his way to
New York on the heels of his
wife-to-be and musical part-
ner, Flora Purim, who’d left
Brazil two years before.
Airto arrived at a time
when popular jazz players
like Miles Davis were electri-
fying jazz, plugging into
rock, creating a new sound
called jazz fusion. Airto was
embraced by these players
and invited to play on Davis’
seminal jazz fusion album,
“Bitches Brew.” It wasn’t
long before Airto stepped into
his own spotlight, creating his
own unique style, fusing ele-
ments of jazz and rock with
sounds of his beloved Brazil,
with all of its flora and fauna.
Now this acclaimed drum-
mer and percussionist was
performing in Florence where
a respectable crowd was rapt
with anticipation.
The stage was set with five
camps, like bartering
Bedouins bivouacked under
the benevolence of the FEC's
curtains, lit green and purple.
There were three tall conga
drums conjoined at the hip,
an electric bass guitar, a bur-
geoning drum kit with more
cymbals than symbols in
“The DaVinci Code,” an elec-
tric keyboard vibrating with
possibilities and a ragtag
table resplendent with a flea
market of mysterious bells
and whistles.
Four drably attired players
and one in bright red ambled
to their stations. Without so
much as a howdy-do, the five
burst into sound — big,
bright, booming — each one
pounding strings and skins in
congruence and in opposition,
polyrhythms and algorithms,
continuing for a long ride
through the Amazon rain for-
est, transported by all manner
of conveyance.
One piece followed another
with no attempt to offer intro-
ductions or titles. This jour-
ney was not about words. It
was about surrendering to the
Yard Debris Disposal
CPR Certifi cations
Adult CPR - $50.00
Child Infant CPR Supplemental - $25.00
Total - $75 for both
2nd Saturday of every month
9am to 1pm at Western Lane Ambulance District
Call
541-997-9614
www.westernlaneambulance.com
HIT THAT
LIKE
BUTTON!
F ACEBOOK . COM /S IUSLAW N EWS
Next Date is October 21
9am to 2pm
at the Kingwood entrance to the airport,
located at Kingwood & 27th St.
COST
Pickup load
$10
2017
Collection
Date:
Small Utility Trailer
(Single Axle)
$10
OCTOBER 21
Medium Utility
Trailer
(10-12 ft)
$15
Large Utility Trailer
(12-18ft)
$20
Greater than
20 cubic yards
$20 +$5/yard over
Bring:
• Tree Clippings
• Leaves
• Grass Clippings
• Weeds
• Prunings
• Brush
DO NOT
Bring your:
• Food &
Household waste
• Animal Waste
• Plastics
• Construction
Debris
• Hazardous Waste
For questions, please contact the
City of Florence Public Works Department at 541-997-4106
sound, letting go to visceral
experience — not something
easy to do in a room full of
theater seats.
Then a white swan from a
tropical garden glided across
the stage to capture the
microphone. She was Diana
Purim Moreira Booker,
daughter of Airto and Flora.
Diana’s husband, Krishna
Booker, manned the conga
drums and other percussion
instruments. He is the son of
jazz bassist Walter Booker,
Airto’s jazz compadre back in
the day.
Acorns don’t fall far from
the tree, not even in Brazil
where the nuts come from.
Relaxed and charming,
Diana made verbal contact
with the crowd, introducing
the players and teasing them
to get it right, spunky funky,
before she would sing. She
belted the lyrics with volume,
enthusiasm and exuberance
befitting the music. But per-
haps because of the music's
high adrenaline, Diana's bal-
lads lacked finesse and
nuance.
But one such ballad Diana
sang lent reassurance to us
old-school jazzers — “Search
for Peace” written by Flora
Purim and great jazz pianist
McCoy Tyner.
For this performance, Airto
moved to the drum kit, and
keyboardist Marcos Silva, he
of the scarlet attire, tickled
some pre-fusion jazz, while
bass player Andre De
Santanna plucked some
chords Walter Booker might
have plucked.
It was a brief respite but
enough to reopen our ears to
new sounds upon which the
players couldn’t wait to
pounce.
Drummer Michael Shapiro
returned to the drum kit and
Airto to the ragtag table of
bells and whistles, reminis-
cent of the platform inhabited
by the sound effects engineer
during a radio adventure
sketch at a live broadcast of
Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie
Home Companion.”
Clearly Airto loves his per-
cussion armory, selecting the
perfect sound to make the
music blossom. Not only was
his body in perpetual motion
accessing the right instru-
ment, he sang high-pitched
solos borrowed from the vast
array of Brazilian birds using
his own vocal cords, causing
a woman in the crowd to
gasp, “He’s an ornithologist!”
The birdman of Brazil took
center stage for a tambourine
solo, vocalizing an aria akin
to scat singing and shaking
the tambourine like a
Stradivarius.
For more than two hours,
the Airto Moreira Band
bounced sounds on a trampo-
line, delighting much of the
FEC crowd who begged for
more. Concert promoter Nate
Kaplan was animated with
joy.
A local drummer with the
Miles To Go Quartet, Nate
was long ago inspired by
Airto, and it was his dream to
share the master and his
music with Florence and to
donate a portion of concert
proceeds to the Siuslaw
School District Music
Education Programs.
Drum roll for Airto and
Nate.
Bravo!
How Safe Are
We In Florence?
JOIN US
October 12th • 1:30-3:30 pm
Come and hear the
best informed agencies to ask and fi nd out.
KEY NOTE SPEAKERS:
C OMMANDER J OHN P ITCHER ,
Florence Police Department
S EAN B ARRET ,
Siuslaw Fire Department
Join us for refreshments and door prize drawings
RSVP@
541-997-8202
1451 Spruce St.
shorewoodsl.com
