CORY PESATURO

Cory Pesaturo (“C Pez”) is on the forefront of the accordion world, pushing the boundaries on multiple fronts of what is possible with the accordion. The only person to ever win the trio of World Championships on Acoustic, Digital & Jazz Accordion, and the only accordion graduate of the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, MA. In 2017, Pesaturo became a Guinness World Record Holder, as RedBull® flew him to Austria to break the Marathon Accordion Record, in which Cory played for over 32 hours. Cory’s main contribution is his visionary thinking of how the accordion should be used, played, taught, and presented in modern music. He has given 2 TED Talk’s and 2 Google Talk’s about this, which are currently the only TED or Google talks in the world about the accordion. Pesaturo is also developing his own electric accordion, and already has made the first ever skinned accordion which includes a symmetric lighting system attached to the keys.  

Pesaturo’s extensive resumé includes appearances at the White House for President and Mrs. Clinton on 4 different occasions, starting at age 12, and 8 other appearances for the Clintons since 2000, along with 14 letters from the first family. On one of those occasions, he became the youngest person to ever perform at a State Dinner, performing with the Marine Strolling Strings for the President of Hungary. Some TV appearances include the Late Show with David Letterman, performing with Johnny Depp, and nationally televised programs in New Zealand, Canada, Italy, Tunisia, France, and Finland. On an NYC broadcast, CNBC/FOX host Maria Bartiromo once said “No one is currently doing more for the Accordion than Cory”. He has judged accordion competitions in the US, Canada, and Europe, in addition to other music competitions, and currently gives masterclasses at various universities throughout the US and Europe on Accordion and Improvisation.  

For his Classical side which is lesser known, a win in a concerto competition at 16 years old gave Pesaturo the rare opportunity to perform with the Brockton Symphony Orchestra as a featured soloist, where he became the youngest accordionist to ever solo with a symphony orchestra in the US back in 2003. Concerning his Jazz side, Cory recorded two CD’s with saxophone legend George Garzone and his known band “The Fringe” at age 19, and has become friends with Jazz and Music Legends Quincy Jones and Wynton Marsalis. His performances at all 3 of his World Championships were played on accordions that were not his, and were generally 90% improvised; both aspects are unheard of in the accordion world.  

The instruments most famous legend in the US, Dick Contino, said when Cory was only 15, “Of all the accordionists I’ve seen over the years, Cory is the one to pass the torch to, the only one who has all the tools to bring the accordion back to its former glory.” Guido Deiro’s son, the “Father of Piano Accordion”, has stated “I’ve worried greatly about the future of the accordion since my father died, but not anymore since seeing and hearing Cory.”  

Pesaturo is also heavily involved and respected with the weather and motor sports worlds as well. He composed the Official list of records set by the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and also wrote the lists for the 2007 and 2008 Seasons as well. Moreover, he has put out reports on Winter Seasons for the US which have been featured on Accuweather.com, HurricaneCirty.com, and others. Cory is known for his FreeSledding work, including his own sledding mountain called “CN Mountain”. He has written sports blogs for sites like Bleacher Report, and has collaborated with members of the Red Sox and the Drop Kick Murphy’s on the “Fenway 100″ album released in 2012. His music has been played on Formula 1 broadcasts on NB

SPARROW R. HEATLEY

Sparrow Heatley is one of two founders of the nonprofit organization From The Heart Tribe. Sparrow has been organizing events and bringing people together to help the environment in Los Angeles for over 11 years.

In 2009, Sparrow helped organize, along with Sean Jennings and Tim Morris, one of the greatest community events in West Los Angeles—“100 Gardens for Gratitude” where over 800 volunteers installed 100 edible gardens in one weekend across Los Angeles at homeless shelters and boys & girls clubs.  This team-building event transformed lawns into drought-tolerant native species or edible landscapes that improved both the environment and water supply.

In 2010, Sparrow helped Topanga Canyon Earth Day Festival creator Stephanie Lallouz organize an annual weekend event featuring live music and vegan food, and highlighted environmental conservation, community, and healing for over 10 thousand attendees. Sparrow continued to help organize this festival until its finale year in 2013. 

Beach cleanups started in 2011 when Sparrow lived in The Bahamas. She soon realized that Paradise Island wasn’t a paradise after all; its beaches around the tourist centers were covered in plastic trash.  To save life in the ocean and restore beauty to its beaches, Sparrow organized her first “Pick Up for Paradise” beach cleanup ridding the pink sands of Nassau from plastic straws and cigarette butts. After leaving the Bahamas for Los Angeles, she continued the effort and carried on the “paradise” name in hopes that people would consider their world a paradise even if it wasn’t an island.  

In 2019, From The Heart Tribe (FTHT) was officially designated as a 501c3. FTHT became the perfect platform to support and inspire leaders to organize environmental, community, or animal welfare events. 

As an ocean advocate, Sparrow organizes scientific data collection through her beach cleanups in order to advance environmental legislation in California, which contributed to the banning of plastic bags and plastic straws.  As a public speaker, she raises awareness about current environmental issues affecting Los Angeles as she did for Proposition 67 in 2016 and the “Clean Water Act” Measure W in 2018.

Sparrow’s passion and strength is helping people understand that some lifestyle choices are destroying the oceans. She strives to create solutions for our planet through her environmental events. To that extent, she goes beyond the ocean and teams up with organizations like TreePeople (a California 501c3 for mountain and park restoration) encouraging volunteers to take action.

Outside her environmental work, Sparrow is a massage therapist and yoga instructor who works with top athletes and people fighting cancer.  She holds degrees in business and management, and studied permaculture design.  Sparrow is continuing her education for green initiatives and renewable energy. During her spare time she enjoys hiking, paddle boarding, snowboarding, and pottery.

SAMUEL J and THE LIGHT BAND

Samuel J, is an innovative singer song writer, producer and conservationist from Cornwall (south UK).

His unique soul touching voice, gracious melodies and deeply moving lyrics are in-captivating hearts around the world.

There is an old wisdom that runs through this music, that speaks to people on a core level, reminding of us of who we truly are beyond our constricting beliefs and stories. Many people identify with Samuel’s incredible love and respect of all people and the importance of nature, a thread which shines through in his music. Samuels empowering songs are part of the beautiful movement happening around the planet, that is guiding us back to our true home – back into the light –

Samuel’s hard work with his unique music and soulful performances has led him to opportunities with his music in Asia, Brazil, Australia, Canada, USA, Europe … sharing the stage with the likes of Ben Harper, Michael Franti, Jack Johnson, Donovan Frankenreiter, Zero 7, Alice Russell, Jurassic 5 and an array of the leading musicians in Brazil……

He has performed main stage at many world renowned festivals, LIB, Shambhala, Lolapalooza, World Surf Tour (Brazil/California), Arise, One Love, Glastonbury, Secret Garden, Big Chill, Wanderlust, Bali Spirit Festival and many more ….

Some of his career highlights include, being selected to perform for his holiness the Dalai Lama (as part of the Dalai Lamas 70th birthday celebration) and performing at the Olympic and Paralympic games in London.

The most exciting chapter is just starting with the recent release of his life’s best works the much awaited album, Into The Light.

See other sections for Samuel’s work as a Youth Empowerment coach and Internationally recognized Ambassador of Ocean Conservation.

”Pure goose bumps when you hear him live.” – Scratch Radio

“This album is a slice of heaven. Some of the most captivating soul nourishing music I’ve heard in my life time. It has literally taken my breath away”… – Music Radar

”Some of the most heart warming beautiful compositions I have heard from this era, and with it the birth of a much needed bright star.” Limiha

“A Ground breaking new Album from a rising star’” – Dave StClair BBC

More Info

More than just a musician ….

Samuel works tirelessly to support underprivileged youth where he tours. Where he often invites local children to perform and be Young Elders.

He admirably built a school from the proceeds of one of his albums he self organized, recorded, and produced in Brasil.

His award winning, ‘Brasil Live Project, Album, which features many recordings with some of Brazils greatest talents and the funds from the project go towards helping underprivileged children across Brazil. He is planning to do this in Africa 2019 then India 2020.

Samuel has been raising funds and awareness for Sea Shepherd and Ocean Care for a number of years and works continuously at schools and through his music to amplify the positive impact of their work. Samuel has taken part in expeditions with both organizations, visiting remote regions of the world and reporting from the areas most effected by exploitation.

SARA NIEMIETZ and W.G. SNUFFY WALDEN

Sara Niemietz is a sonic storyteller. Influenced by the heart of jazz and the soul of blues, she writes songs with a modern edge.  Composer and guitar-virtuoso, W.G. Snuffy Walden, paints musical landscapes over which Sara’s powerful vocals take flight.  At their shows, the duo plays original music and reinterpreted classics with a full band for a night full of energy and music!

Today, Sara’s credits included U.S. and international concert tours (over thirty countries with Postmodern Jukebox, and she and Snuffy have just returned from their third European Tour), starring roles on Chicago and Broadway stages, YouTube videos seen more than 26 million times, appearances at the Grand Ole Opry and the Ellen Show. She recently guest starred on The Arrangement, and her original music has been heard on Ava DuVernay’s Queen Sugar. Sara’s most recent album Get Right is a collaboration with Emmy-award winning composer W.G. Snuffy Walden.

W.G. Snuffy Walden has woven the musical fabric of countless beloved shows including Friday Night Lights, The Wonder Years, thirtysomething, Nashville, My So-Called Life, and the West Wing for which he won the Emmy for Outstanding Title Theme. Along the way, there have been 13 Emmy nominations, 33 BMI awards, and the Richard Kirk Career Achievement Award. Outside of scoring, Snuffy has played with such artists as Chaka Khan, Eric Burdon, and Donna Summer.

Together, Sara and Snuffy create shows filled with warmth, truth, and tunes you’ll leave humming!

https://www.saraniemietz.com/

http://www.snuffywalden.com/

PHIL and PAM LAWSON

About Being Spherical

Being Spherical; Reshaping Our Lives and Our World for the 21st Century, is “an attractively bound and illustrated modern philosophical treatise,” according to the editorial reviewer, Dr. John Maling, PhD., with “practical tools” for thoughtful individuals who are “concerned with our world, and its long-term direction and our long-term survival as a civilization and race.”  

Authors Phil Lawson and Rob Lindstrom more simply defined it as “a guided tour of an emerging worldview.” 

What started out with a question: Why doesn’t the world work the way we were told it does? Turned into a realization that we, as a species are not adapting well to the realities of our times.

While Being Spherical provides the core foundation for a new way to see, think and act, in this dawning era of interconnectivity and interdependency, Phil believes people also need a way to model and apply this in real-life without having to study the sciences behind it. That’s what he’s doing now; what he and Pam are both doing now. Their boutique R&D company, Spherit, has developed a technology that demonstrates to people that it is possible, and easy, to make better decisions, in real-time, when you update your personal operating system from mechanistic to holistic.

More than 40,000 people in different ages and demographics have experienced this humane technology, in many fields and uses, including the health industry, workforce, education, employment readiness, food security, and interpersonal relations, used by U.S. military personnel.

To be spherical, you must see, think, and act spherical, say Phil and Pam.

More About Phil and Pam Lawson

When Pam and Phil met at the age of six, in the lobby of a church in Denver, both of their families were in crisis.

Pam’s mother had recently died from complications of multiple sclerosis, and Phil’s little sister had been diagnosed with leukemia and was enduring the treatments to recover.

They were in survival mode back then, experiencing constant, disruptive change. A new step-family for Pam; a cross-country move for Phil. Both of them switching houses and schools, repeatedly, in the midst of leaving friends and losing track of each other.

But Pam and Phil had a bond that was unforgettable. And Phil tracked Pam down the winter of 1968, when she was 13, when his family returned to Colorado for the holidays.

They married young at 18, anxious to make a difference in the world the only way they knew how, as volunteer mission workers, traveling the dusty back roads of East Texas armed with ginormous convictions. Followed by three years in Alabama, and seven years in Mississippi, dedicated to a cause that spanned a decade in the Deep South, paying their own way as janitors, floor cleaners and trash haulers.

They were poor. Malnourished. Embedded. But as they moved through disadvantaged communities, ravaged by inhumane conditions, they had rare and extraordinary experiences that fed them priceless information— experiences, that transcended what they had imagined was their purpose there.

And then, at the age of 29, an unexpected turn of events launched them unprepared into the business world. At the very moment the marketplace was facing unprecedented changes from new and disruptive technologies, including Microsoft’s personal computer operating system.

As Microsoft released Windows in 1985 and reached 2,793 employees by the end of 1988, Phil was working his way up from the production department of a startup multimedia firm in Dallas to the president of that company, making it a beta test center for new technology applications. And Pam rose through the ranks of the same company from quality control, to the art department, to Creative Director. By 1988, Phil had grown the operation from a handful of people to a staff of nearly 40, covering round-the-clock shifts.

Phil and Pam were busting down barriers by then, and they kept going— living and working in Hollywood; traveling to other countries on business; rubbing shoulders with creatives and intellectuals. They even experienced a couple of historic natural disasters.

But as they moved through religion, business, and the arts; through deprivation and privilege; through convention and eccentricity, they began to detect common core characteristics in all human activities, no matter the box. They began to see patterns. And they wondered if the power of personal computing might one day expedite human behavior growth.

More importantly, they began to realize they had unconventional human skills. They could adapt, flex and respond to life’s challenges, in real-time, better than anyone else they knew. But they needed scientific proof to explain what they were experiencing before anyone would take them seriously.

So, they went in search of it, at the age of 44, dropping out of the business world and moving to a cabin in the Colorado Rockies to study, think and write.

They are part of a consilience of dynamic thinkers emerging from the limits and lessons of that era, who know if they are to live well, and meaningfully, in this dawning era of interconnection, it will require a dramatic transformation in the way we see, think and act.

More about Phil:

• Besides being an author, inventor, patent-holder, and public speaker, Phil has worked for companies in the roles of COO, President, and EVP, (at a publicly traded internet company.)
• In addition, Phil was a management consultant for seven years and traveled internationally on business, a portion of that time living and working in Hollywood.

Also, Phil has strategically designed 5 technology systems and worked with teams of programmers to deploy them:

• The first online HMO member enrollment kiosk for HealthNet, a California HMO, working with ESRI on this project
• One of the first web-based GIS sites for consumers (@InfoNow for Visa)
• A fully integrated XML product to create Web sites & identical CD-ROMs for photographers (@StockImagery)
• Digital Asset Media Management (HTML-based) (@D-Pics)
• Spherical Modeling Tool. U.S. Patent approved 2008 (@Spherit)

In 2011 Phil began identifying ways the scripts and subroutines of the Spherit IP might help socialize AI (for use by bots or AI personal assistants) and by 2013 he was strategically designing ways it could work.

More about Pam:

When Phil and Pam lived and worked in Hollywood, Pam was a Photo-Illustrator. She did projects for the publishing, periodical and entertainment industries.

Additionally …

• Pam has been a Creative Director at two different agencies (a multi-media firm and the image bank) influencing the message and direction of those companies.
• Pam worked as a reporter for nine years giving voice to a string of mountain communities west of Denver, and received nearly two dozen journalism awards.
• As the co-owner of Spherit, Pam has been responsible for defining the voice of the company (translating abstract R&D concepts and protocols into human- speak) and for product messaging for the user interface. This has included creating online interactive pages, presentations, and co-producing countless informational videos.

Award-winning mask maker Eric Bornstein of Behind The Mask Studio/Theatre specializes in custom made masks, corporate event planning, arts education, and mask theater programming. Eric has studied mask making with masters Agung Suardana in Bali, and Donato Sartori in Italy. He received his MLA in Fine Arts along with the Thomas Small prize from Harvard University. Behind The Mask was recently awarded the commission of 120 award statuettes for the prestigious Reggae Gold award event in Kingston, Jamaica. Previously, Eric was awarded a Fulbright award to revive and reinvigorate the art of giant puppet effigies in Jamaica 2017. He won the 2016 IRNE award for Best Puppetry Design for Company One’s Shockheaded Peter, and was part of the Liars & Believers team that won the Excellence in Production Design award at the New York Musical Theatre Festival 2012 for his masks in Le Cabaret Grimm. Eric was recently featured on the PBS hit show, Pinkalicious and Peteriffic. He is currently the artist-in-residence at the First Church Boston UU.

Born a man, ”LadyJames” trail blaze’s daily for the LGBT community by ”living life in my definition.” Having been bullied for his femininity, his goal is to help people going through the same who want to keep their birth gender parts. 

Born and raised in small-town Mansfield, Connecticut, Alexa Curtis knew she was different. She didn’t fit into the “normal social mold.” When she entered middle school, all the bullying she endured led her to needing an outlet to escape. In 2011, at just 12 years old, she started a fashion blog, A Life in the Fashion Lane. It became a platform for her to express her feelings around everything relating to teens, body image, and mental health.