🔦 Your Spotlight Takeaways: Why Gia Nahmens Is Filling The Spire for Venezuela
Two earthquakes hit Venezuela on June 24, thirty-nine seconds apart, at 7.2 and 7.5. They struck the La Guaira coast and Caracas hardest, the two places Gia Nahmens grew up.
Gia is Operations Manager at Cantabile Choirs. She has spent her career around musicians, so she started asking, and put One Ground One Sound together in about three weeks.
Every musician on the bill is donating their time. Nobody on that stage is being paid, which is what makes the rest of it possible.
Every dollar raised goes to Ventura Orbit, a non-profit working directly with children and women affected by the earthquakes.
One Ground One Sound is at The Spire, 82 Sydenham Street, on Monday, July 27. Tickets are $20, which Gia will tell you buys meals, toys, and a way back into a classroom.
🔗👉 Links are at the end of this article.
👇 The inspiring story, and how you can help, are worth the scroll.
🎵 Coming up: One Ground One Sound, July 27 A benefit concert for Venezuelan earthquake relief at The Spire, 82 Sydenham Street. Every musician is donating their time, so every dollar raised goes to relief work. Tickets are $20. Grab yours here.
On June 24, two earthquakes struck Venezuela thirty-nine seconds apart. The first measured 7.2. The second, 7.5.
Gia Nahmens watched it happen from Kingston.
She was born and raised in Caracas. Her summers and weekends were spent on the coast at Caraballeda. Her family is from La Guaira. Her great-aunt founded more than six schools along the coast and became head director of every primary school in the region. Her great-uncle built many of the houses in Los Corales.
This is the second time that coast has been taken from her. In December 1999, the Vargas mudslides buried Los Corales under three metres of mud and swept much of it into the sea. Tens of thousands of people died. Her family left the coast for good and stayed in Caracas. The state they left, then called Vargas, is now called La Guaira.
The coast they left, and the city they stayed in, were the two places the earthquakes hit hardest.
The La Guaira coast before the June 24 earthquakes.
A stretch of the same coast after the earthquakes. Gia Nahmens spent her childhood summers here.
"My family history is attached to La Guaira," she says. "It’s quite devastating to see places that I grew up, streets I grew up walking around, and they’re no longer there."
Buildings in Los Corales, before the June 24 earthquakes and after. Gia Nahmens’s family on her father’s side helped found the town.
Her family survived. One aunt was forced out of her building because it is close to collapse, but everyone is safe.
That is not something every Venezuelan family can say right now, and Gia knows it.
So she did the thing she actually knows how to do.
She is Operations Manager at Cantabile Choirs, she has spent her career around musicians, and she started asking.
Gia Nahmens, Operations Manager at Cantabile Choirs, grew up in Caracas and spent her summers on the La Guaira coast. She organized One Ground One Sound in three weeks.
Kingston said yes
What she got back is remarkable, and it is worth reading the list slowly.
Geoffrey Sirett, the baritone who runs Cantabile Choirs and grew up here, is singing. So is Larissa Koniuk, the soprano who co-founded the Bicycle Opera Project with him. Gisèle Dalbec-Szczesniak, who spent twenty-nine years as Concertmaster of the Kingston Symphony and teaches strings at Queen’s, is playing. So is cellist Jill Vitols. So is Anna Sudac. So is Mauricio Montecinos, the Kingston guitarist who came here from Chile. Tim Stiff is on the bill, and more guests are still to be announced.
Levon Ichkhanian, whose group headlines One Ground One Sound at The Spire on July 27. Photo: levonmusic.com.
Headlining is The Levon Ichkhanian Group, with Levon Ichkhanian on guitar, Pat Kilbride on bass, David Atkinson on keyboards and Wilson Laurencin on drums.
Ichkhanian is not a small booking. The Toronto guitarist has toured with A.R. Rahman, Loreena McKennitt and Dee Dee Bridgewater, played the Mirvish run of Come From Away, and been recognized by the Governor General for musical excellence.
He plays guitar, oud, bouzouki and mandolin, and he is bringing all of it to The Spire.
The programme moves around a lot, on purpose.
There is a jazz band. There is world music. There is musical theatre. There is classical guitar, and a duet for violin and cello.
Every one of these musicians is donating their time. Nobody on that stage is being paid.
That is what makes the next sentence possible: every dollar raised goes to relief work in Venezuela.
Where the money goes
Proceeds go to Ventura Orbit, a non-profit working directly with children and women affected by the earthquakes. Gia chose it because she knows the organization and she knows its work.
Gia is blunt about what the need looks like.
"There are many that, unfortunately, have had to have leg amputations and arm amputations," she says. "There are many that no longer have families, parents. They are now homeless, and it’s going to take many, many years to reconstruct and to help these kids."
Thousands of people are still missing.
But that is not where she leaves it, and it is worth noticing that she refuses to.
"They’re very resilient," she says of Venezuelans. "So we are hoping that with a little bit of help, we can move along the process of healing."
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What twenty dollars does
Ask Gia what she most wants Kingston to understand, and she does not talk about the music. Gia talks about the arithmetic.
"What I would like them to know most about is the immense help that just $20 of a ticket would do for a kid in Venezuela," she says. "We’re talking about meals. They don’t have food. So we’re talking about helping buy food for them, helping buy toys for them, helping get them back to school. Hopefully we can get them back to school quickly."
That is the whole pitch. Twenty dollars. Meals, and toys, and a way back into a classroom.
"And you get to enjoy wonderful musicians," she adds. "Phenomenal musicians. World-class musicians."
She is not exaggerating, and she did not have to go far to find them.
If you want to help
One Ground One Sound is at The Spire, 82 Sydenham Street, on Monday, July 27. Tickets are $20.
To be clear about one thing, because the wording has confused people: the organizers are not collecting donated goods. Relief agencies are already overwhelmed with material donations, and getting them into the country is slow and complicated. What they need is money, and what you can do is buy a seat and donate.
Every dollar goes where it’s needed. Let’s fill The Spire.
Can’t make it on the 27th? You can still donate directly.
The Facebook event page has the latest on the guest artists still to be announced.
🎵 Coming up: One Ground One Sound, July 27 A benefit concert for Venezuelan earthquake relief at The Spire, 82 Sydenham Street. Every musician is donating their time, so every dollar raised goes to relief work. Tickets are $20. Grab yours here.
How You Can Help
The whole ask on this one is simple, and it costs twenty dollars.
Buy a ticket. $20 at Donorbox. Monday, July 27, The Spire, 82 Sydenham Street.
Donate directly. Can’t make the date? Ventura Orbit takes donations for earthquake relief straight up.
Spread the word. Share the Facebook event with anyone who would fill a seat.
Bring someone. The musicians are donating their time. The least the rest of us can do is fill the room.
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