Edwards Music Site dot com update 7/6/2021 

This is to let you know what’s going on with my music activities. 

Mistaken Moves Movie: I scored the music for this feature length movie mystery film and shooting has finished. I was in touch with the director/writer Jimmy Cullors of Las Vegas and they had a great wrap party, he said. He is appointing me to the board of directors and we are discussing future film projects to work together, so the chances of using music I have already composed, including music with collaborators as well as new music are pretty good. 

Across Bank Street YouTube short video project: I helped with one shoot in Wallace, Idaho in June and had a few lines as an emergency doctor. We are scheduled for another shoot in the mountains outside Wallace on July 10th in which I have 3 pages of lines to shoot as the grim reaper. The shoots are great fun and I am meeting very interesting and talented new friends. One of my new friends is writing a book on Making Chinese Music which sounds very interesting to me. 

Qualchan & Whistalks Opera: I have had several Zoom meetings with Paula Newberry who is forming a new opera company in Memphis Tennessee and plans a premiere for the summer of 2022. She was scheduled to come to North Idaho for a few days starting today, but may have to postpone this trip due to some bad news she recently received. We’ll keep our fingers crossed. 

Mildred Bailey concert: I produced a show featuring Cee Cee Curtis from the Coeur d’Alene Tribe singing songs made famous about a hundred years ago by Mildred Bailey. Mildred was a Coeur d’Alene Tribal member also and had several number hit songs emanating from her work with the Paul Whiteman band on national radio. Her brother, Al Rinker was in a duo with a guy named Bing Crosby when they started their careers in their early 20’s and Bing gave Mildred full credit for starting his successful career to to her introduction of Bing to Paul Whiteman who hired him as a singer. This concert is scheduled for July 8th, 2021 at the outdoor Riverstone Amphitheater in. Coeur d’Alene from 6 to 8 pm. National guitar fingerpicking champion Steve King will be leading the instrumental trio backup swing band. 

On July 7th I am featured on a podcast from the Kootenai Arts & Culture Alliance and some of my music will be broadcast on this show, including music from my music CD Wataino inspired by Puerto Rican Taino Indian tribe who were the original inhabitants of Puerto Rico until the Spaniards arrived. My co-writer Orlondo Sanchez is getting a great band together and planning on performing music from this CD. I have heard and seen videos of the band rehearsing the songs and they sound great after rehearsing only two times. 

An agent for a Cuban band lead by Kiki Perez named Nino Mutaca has invited me to go with him on a music cultural to Cuban and I agreed and am excited and hopeful that the trip will come off soon and we can go to Cuba and listen to many great Cuban musical groups performing great music in that isolated country. 

I have composed many bilingual songs in Spanish and English over the years and finally found a Cuban-American singer named Ivana Cespedes who can do my songs justice in English and Spanish. I am attaching the latest of five songs we have finished mixing and three more are in the can. There is a huge Spanish speaking population in the country that makes up a tremendous pool of potential fans so I am hoping to bridge the gap between the Spanish and English cultures and promote mutual understanding and helping in the transition to an even more multi-cultural society in this country. 

So, thank you again for your support for the team. 

Stay well, 

Gary Edwards 

gedward@roadrunner.com 

www.EdwardsMusicSite.com

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