HEARTbeats Foundation Board

As a small child growing up in a small town I was always fascinated with my neighbors rituals. I loved peering in windows at dusk during late afternoon walks with my parents and watching my friends and their families prepare dinner. Watching them together sitting together around a table full of food always gave me such a warm comforting feeling and I knew that shortly, I too would be at home, with my family around a table sharing a meal. I can’t remember exactly what year it was but I know I was not yet a teenager. I “adopted” a child from India through Unicef, and sent her my allowance every month and in return, received a letter and picture detailing her life and family. I remember thinking how inconceivable it was that this child had no family and no home with food on the table to return to every evening after school – if she even went to school. It made a tremendous impression on me at that time.

My mother, being a refugee from Germany in the 1930’s, knew all about being homeless, having nothing but the clothes on one’s back and having to depend on others to survive. She spent much of her life giving back to her community even as she had graduated in the top of her law school class at Yale University and could have chosen a much different path. Her influence and others like her in my life cemented the path that I eventually was to take. While I was enrolled in the Eastman School of Music in the early 80’s, music therapy was just starting to take hold and be recognized as an important part of helping others to cope with difficult situations. I was very interested but there was no real degree program available so I continued with my music performance work but always looked for opportunities to play in hospitals for the sick, retirement homes for the elderly and schools for the young and disadvantaged.

Having the possibility at this time in my life to be able to pool my resources with friends and colleagues and start a foundation that will actively put all of this into play became very important and necessary to me. There are so many children in the world without access to any form of self-expression who are forced to find other –sometimes much more dangerous and destructive means- to cope with the difficulty in their lives. I hope that through our HEARTbeats Foundation we can build a bridge for them to find their “voices” and help start healing whatever wounds they may have. So many of these children cannot go outside their own borders be it physical or emotional so we hope to give them access to that freedom through music and art. It takes such a small amount of caring and attention to give hope and the possibility of a better tomorrow for these children. Even if we are only able to reach one in a hundred and make their lives better through our efforts, we will have succeeded.

Although my original impetus for being involved with HEARTbeats could best be summed up as doing a good thing for the right reasons, that began to evolve in short order and following our trip to Nepal, I began to realize a much stronger and personal connection: purpose. Helping children in need find their voices while remaining true to cultural and societal heritage as well as helping them utilize music and art to find and focus purpose in their respective pursuits of happiness is every bit as important as food, clothing, shelter, and medicine.

It is an honor and privilege to bring a career’s worth of experience and skills to the foundation’s mission of providing program services and creating awareness.

Drew McManus along with The Unatti Girls, Kathmandu, Nepla, 2010.

Drew McManus, arts consultant

Arts manager, musician, and cultural entrepreneur Drew McManus has been involved with every aspect of nonprofit performing arts organizations. In addition to being a recognized expert within the nonprofit arts field, Mr. McManus is the proprietor and author of the highly successful new media outlet Adaptistration; the only weblog dedicated to issues about the orchestra business. Additionally, Mr. McManus is a conservatory trained musician from the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, MD. He holds degrees in tuba performance as well as regular work on the piano, arranging, and conducting.

Mr. McManus is regularly quoted as an authority in a wide variety of international traditional media outlets such as the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dallas Daily News, The Guardian Unlimited, and the Melbourne Age. Mr. McManus has been a guest on international radio programs such as NPR’s All Things Considered, WNYC’s Soundcheck, CBC Radio One’s Definitely Not The Opera, and the Swedish radio show “Mitt i Musiken” (“In the middle of the music”).

Some of Mr. McManus’ more exotic projects include a tip to Doha, Qatar in the summer of 2008 to serve as the lead consultant in developing a comprehensive organizational and operational model for a $60 million orchestra and music academy project. In 2005, Mr. McManus was among the first U.S. cultural administrators to spend more than a full week in Caracas, Venezuela as an official guest of the government to study the now world famous Fundacion del Estado para el Sistema Nacional de las Orquestras Juveniles e Infantiles, commonly referred to as “El Sistema,” which resulted in the first detailed series of articles about the program in the United States.

From January, 2006 through January, 2007 he served as Senior Editor for Eastman School of Music’s Polyphonic.org project where his responsibilities included securing and creating original content for the website, developing and implementing the editorial strategy of the website as well as designing and implementing special website features. In the same year, hours after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast Region; Mr. McManus established an extensive relief effort at Adaptistration to aid displaced musicians. Over 300 offers providing shelter, direct aid, and work opportunities from across the country resulted in more than 60 musicians and managers finding temporary or long term solutions until they could return to their homes.

In 2010, he launched The Venture Platform, an unprecedented website architecture designed to provide everything needed to creatively build and manage a performing arts organization’s online presence.

Working from an attitude that “there has never been a better time to be in the business”, Mr. McManus currently works as a performing arts consultant with a wide range of international clients from multibillion dollar international foundations and nonprofit performing arts organizations of all budget size to individual artists. When he isn’t working 10 hour days, Mr. McManus spends time with his wife enjoying everything Chicagoland has to offer, avoids cutting off his fingers while pursing his love for woodworking, keeping his coffee habit under control, and playing with his three cats; Carmen, Tosca, and Cody.

The HEARTbeats Foundation is new, but its necessity is very old.  In my tradition, we learn, “For the poor shall never cease (my emphasis) out of the land; therefore I command you, saying, ‘You shall open your hand wide to your brother, to your poor, and to your needy, in your land.’”  (Deuteronomy 15:11).  The mandate to care for the poor and the needy is a never-ending one that requires our constant vigilance.  Still, in today’s world, we cannot abide by the limitations of this ancient mandate.  “Your poor”, “your needy” and “in your land” must now be broadened into a universal vision for our time and in our world.  All poor and needy are our poor and needy.  Every land is our land.  THAT is why I am proud and honored to be part of HEARTbeats.  HEARTbeats’ mission is to address the fragile situation of some of the most vulnerable of the poor and needy in every land: children, our children.

HEARTbeats has a clear and focused task: to bring music to children experiencing poverty and national or international conflict.  Why?  Because those of us who are privileged to have music refract through us know the existential hope that is born out of the musical experience.  We know that this non-descript hope is like an embryonic cell within our bodies – it can become anything.  For a child enslaved by poverty, music, for its own sake, can provide a freedom s/he has never known and then s/he can demand it and learn to create it in other arenas of life.  For a child trapped in violence, music can provide a balm, a salve over and against the unspeakable brutality and heartlessness to which they are subjected.  We of HEARTbeats cannot heal wounds nor do we have solutions for the complexities of international disagreement.  But we know that children are always, and have always been, the innocent sufferers.  As musicians we will be physicians and diplomats of the spirit for them.

Neil Comess-Daniels

The title of Neil Comess-Daniels’ undergraduate school thesis was “The American Synagogue and its Role in the Lack of Formation of Jewish Community in America.”  What makes that fact seemingly confounding, is that he would eventually go on to be ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and soon become Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels.

Were it not for the fact that his professors were by then familiar with his strong beliefs and dedication to progress and reform, they would have undoubtedly assumed that the inclusion of the word “Lack” in his thesis title was a typo.  But they knew better, since he was one of their star pupils. But they knew Neil was dedicated to building a community of people with passion, compassion and true social activism.

That Neil Comess-Daniels, who has been the Rabbi at Beth Shir Shalom in Santa Monica, California since 1991, has gone on to gain a highly respected reputation as a creative, energetic, passionate, fearless, outspoken and often controversial leader of his temple community, would come as no surprise to those educators

“Rabbi Neil” as he known by his wide community of congregants, colleagues and friends, oversees a unique congregation which he leads with a deep fervor for justice, social action and, always, music.   His music, both prayerful and secular, original and traditional, informs the temple’s Shabbat and holiday celebrations whether he is singing alone with his guitar, or amongst the all-member TishTones band he formed amost 20 years ago.

One of Rabbi Neil’s overriding passions is the sharing of learning and living with children.  This is especially evident at Friday morning “Tot Shabbat” – 30 minutes of joyous and pre-school appropriate songs and “prayers” which has an overflow crowd of 18 month to 5-year-olds  identifying with the tradition and “rockin’ the sanctuary.”  His book, “I Miss You – Poems, Prayers, Songs and Gentle Guidance for Adults Helping the Grieving Child” is a staple in many pre and elementary schools across the country.  This passion is also evident in the many recordings he has made of his original children’s songs.  His latest CD, “On this Day, and All the Time” features his universal music for young children of all backgrounds, but adults have been known to be as taken with the melodies and meanings of these songs as their children.

The Rabbi’s path to Beth Shir Shalom began in 1981, when he formed Temple Shir Shalom in West Los Angeles.  Membership soon outgrew the Temple’s temporary space at a swimming school, (the shul with a pool!) prompting them to move to a larger space in the basement social hall of an Episcopal Church.  In 1991 Shir Shalom merged with a rabbi-seeking Beth Sholom Temple in Santa Monica and Beth Shir Shalom was created, truly the Home of the Song of Peace.

“Praying with our legs” is how Rabbi Neil refers to his work for social justice and what he sees as the never ending task of healing this world.  He has chaired the Martin Luther King, Jr. Western Coalition and the Interfaith Holocaust Service, and also is an Active Member of Rabbis for Human Rights and the Abrahamic Faiths Peacemaking Initiative.  He is a member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and serves on the Board of Rabbis of Southern California. He has been a recipient of the Islamic Center of Southern California Peace Award.