Earlier this month, guitarist and D’Addario artist Steve Salerno, and five jazz musicians who perform regularly at the Jazz Loft in Stonybrook, New York, flew to Haiti with instruments to donate from the Jazz Loft’s Music Outreach Department.
Together they brought down guitars, basses, trumpets, saxophones, trombones, flutes, clarinets, a complete drum set and a guitar and bass amp, as well as performed two concerts and a master class for the students at the True Love Missions School.
The Jazz Loft musicians worked with the students on basic instrumental techniques and taught them such works as Duke Ellington’s renowned “C Jam Blues.”
“Our trip to Haiti was a tremendously moving and edifying experience,” says Salerno. “It was quite heart-wrenching to witness the deeply desperate socioeconomic circumstances of these wonderful people: utter poverty, lack of education, lack of health care, lack of clean water, lack of sanitation, 80 percent unemployment rate, high levels of crime, disease, a crumbling makeshift infrastructure, a lack of electricity and odious government corruption — all of which has created monumental challenges for the Haitian people of apocalyptic proportion.”
