July 12, 2008
hi there, it's been a while since I have last written. We have been very busy moving yet AGAIN. I have to say this is the first time in my life I was not excited about moving. Even though our new home is fantastic! I had developed a bit of an attachment to our old place as my sweet daughter was born there. anyway, as I have always said in the past attachments are not healthy, they make us cling to objects and matter that only keep us tide to our past and not the present. The present? my luna bee, that is my present.....everyday a new adventure...I love her! I love my husband! I love our life together, where my husband and my daughter are...there will be my home.....this is my life and I love it! scroll down for some cute photos.
love love
~estela~
March 6, 2008
Hey everyone. so as soon as we can, we will be putting up some pictures of luna and booking some lua gigs for spring and summer. Just wanted to let everyone know that we are now running a program, Blue Ridge Music Together, which is a musical program for infants, toddlers and their parents. It is an enormously beautiful program. We'll keep you posted as things develop
February 7, 2008
sorry it has taken so long to get you some news. our website had a glitch but thanks to christen we are back on track. so if you have emailed us through our guest book over the past few months we haven't been able to recieve emails. so please try again. the news is that Luna is now 6 weeks old and growing beautifully here are a few pictures of our little girl. we are doing well more news to come in the next few days. exciting news! keep coming back! love ~estela~
February 3, 2008
she's here! luna uriela berzonsky. december 26th 2007!
love~ estela~
November 27, 2007
WE are due any time now......JUST......WAITING.....SEND POSITIVE, LOVING VIBES OUR WAY!!!! WE WILL KEEP YOU POSTED ON THE BABY. THANKS ~Estela~
November 17, 2007
wow! last night was so wonderful! it was so great seeing all of you! so many people came out and we really appreciate the welcome home! we look forward to spending many more nights together with you all playing and dancing. again thank you!
~Estela~
October 31, 2007
Alllll right! WE have been Busy. woooof! But in all of the welcomed madness of preparing to becoming new parents. We have gotten a reunion gig together. We hope that you all can make it out. This will be the only gig we will do before the baby comes. So don't miss out we would LOVE to see all of you that we haven't had a chance to see yet. Our line-up will be Matt Wyatt on Drums, Bob Holub on accordion and piano, Jamal Milner on guitar, Dave B on bass and Estela on Jarana and vocal mic. We will miss Prof. K.P. he would love to grace us with his immaculate twang box of luscious vibrations however he's neck deep in prof. world in N.C. at the moment and hopes to get up to C’ville in the near future to release, OH, Watch out C’Ville. That’s all for now! Happy Hallowwwweeeeeennnnnnn!
Love ~estela~
September 28, 2007
sup! we are working on trying to set up a gig/fundraiser here in charlottesville, virginia to benefit our friends in chincha del carmen, lima, peru. our friends there are in great need of money to help them rebuild their homes and town. this was a place that thank good no one died in the earthquake but their homes and town have been destroyed. Please if you have any suggestions or would like to help by volunteering time to help us set something up, volunteer your music or just make a donation please let us know by signing our guest book or giving us a call most of you have our number, so that we can connect for further details. thanks! ~estela~
August 31, 2007
we are HOME! come visit! ~love estela and dave~
August 14, 2007
we are on our way home this friday, a wedding on saturday with jamal and brian caputo. exciting! then looking for a place to live back in c'ville. it has been a year since we have been traveling and three years since we left home, I am sure that it has changed a lot as it always seems to introduce us to a different life eachtime we come home. think of us as we journey home and we send our love and graditude out to all of you for being such wonderful friends. thank you! ~estela~
July 23, 2007
so close to coming back to the east. we have been blessed in so many ways in the past year. thanks so much to allen, leslie, max and jack for sharing their home with us for our summer in point richmond california. thanks to all our friends and students for their love and support we will miss you all and hope to see you soon. as for the baby I am 4 and half months and growing all is well and life continues to be filled with adventure and love. peace be with you all and remember to make little steps everday towards living lightly on the earth. one song, one world. paz, amor y justicia!~estela~
June 3, 2007
we're back in the san francisco bay area and adjusting to being back in big city life.......hmmm...pretty intense at the moment but we will adjust. check it out-- here's a little riddle for ya'll to figure out....what is small and precious and makes one become more concerned about our environment and the state of the world, because of how it will affect it's future? well, dave and me have just created one of those and it's hangin' out in my belly as we speak! what can we do to make the world a better place to live in? what can we do as parents to change these big problems? well, like a stone mason, we chip away a little chunk at a time? I believe for us it will be to live in a natural structure, to use solar power, to find ways to conserve water, to become less dependent on oil, to grow as much of our own food as possible, to support local organic farmers and to live simply so that we create less waste. cutting back on the cost of living cuts back on the amount of hours we have to do work that we don't enjoy which creates time for us to nurture our truly important natural resources and those are our children....our families, our friends and our communities. how would we do that? by teaching music, playing music, building with natural materials, being involved in our community and available to those who are looking for simplicity in their lives and whatever else destiny tells us we need to do. because destiny has it's plan and we are the foot soldiers of that destiny. our weapons are the knowledge of indigenous people from all over the world as well as here in our own small communities, we carry the wisdom of our ancestors and the hopes and dreams of our children. making money has never been a problem for dave and I and the reason for that is the fire that burns in our hearts because of our love for life and our respect for creation. we realize as long as we keep that fire burning we will always be rich! God willing we can continue to spread that wealth. anyway, we love you all where ever you are, let us know how your doing!
~peace~
estela
May 19, 2007
hey folks, life is good! we are in southern california helping our friends betty and tautacho with some plastering and next week we will be learning how to pour floors for a cob house we are working on up in the beautiful mountains of santa barbara county near los padres national forest. we will be here for two and a half more weeks then to the bay area to work for the summer. it was wonderful seeing family and friends on our way across the beautiful country of ours and we look forward to seeing you all soon. big ups to my friend patrice on getting a fantastic job in las vegas! I will miss you but I am so glad that you will be sharing your healing hands with the folks in las vegas! hugs to the family and more new to come! peace~estela~
April 29, 2007
two more days and we are heading back to cali! we can't wait to see our california hommies! It has been so awesome visiting with family and friends and watching the buds on trees, flowers and brush burst open with beautiful spring colors, virginia is such a jungle! anyway not much to say other than we will be on our way out west starting wednesday and stopping to visit in memphis, dallas, the virgin de guadalupe mountains to pay our respects, el paso to visit family, new mexico, arizona and a few places in souther cali then up to los padres to hang with betty and tach!!!!! so exciting. SO! das all folks! kisses and hugs ~estela~
April 8, 2007
hi ya'll, we have returned to the states and have been spending a lot of time with our families, it has been wonderful catching up with everyone. we went to shannon farm this past friday and saturday. it is so beautiful out there and we thank the folks we met for spending so much time with us. it was really wonderful to meet such great people! so our plans are to visit with friends and family for the month of april. catch up with some business possibilities close to the end of april. start heading out to visit with betty and tach for may and then head up to the bay to work from june through the end of august. tie up some loose ends and head back home to the beautiful blue ridge mountains and c'ville virginia. we have a lot of work ahead of us. we really miss our friends from peru and will be working hard to facilitate being able to play with them again soon. big hugs to all of you out there we haven't seen yet and we hope to see you soon. peace~estela~
March 19, 2007
Well, so we finished our new CD, Borrowed Time, today. We should have it back in a few days, and we are coming back to the United States next Monday, and we should have it available as soon as we can run it through the proper channels. I am very happy to report that we have a really great feeling about this project. A huge thanks to a wonderful producer, drummer, teacher and friend, Mino Mele, for guiding us through this very intense creative period and encouraging us to move forward with this project. It is so joyous when people come together to create something beautiful. we are truly blessed to be on this path of destiny. we look forward to coming home and seeing our families.
March 4, 2007
Hi! Wow, I really have to go to bed...but I just can't help myself. I am so excited about our new c.d. I can't begin to tell you how good this feels. We have created something so truly amazing, important, magical, and so beautiful and positve I can't believe it's really happening. I love LIMA, PERU and god bless peruvian musicians! And god bless the strength of the Peruvian spirit! They really kick ass!!!!! I am serious. The world needs to know what treasures Peru holds and this is my life's mission. I want to thank our good friends, mino, gisela, chebo, moises, rafo, cecilia, javier, jeni, lourdes, cesar, Chiky vilacorta, lucho mena, graciela, gita, coco linares, all the children of these folks who have been so patient with us. estela and fernando from la tarumba, marcos and the folks from apuesta cultural as well as the folks for Jazz Zone. All the beautiful and talented peoples of Sicuani and Puno who have shared their music with us. Thank you to the Pacific ocean and Venezuela the birthplace of this project. Thanks to Carol and the ladies from Venamor for providing a nesting ground for what inspired us to come to Peru and follow through with our destiny. we will be releasing our c.d. in April so keep your eyes peeled and ears ready. We have learned something very valuable about music....when the right musicians come together at the right place and the right time and are playing straight from their hearts...magic happens....songs are written....and god speaks. Thank you all so very much.
February 18, 2007
We performed at the lovely Apuesta Cultural in Miraflores last night. It was wonderful spending time playing with Chebo and Javier. Chebo is my favorite percussionist hands down. It is so magical playing music with these guys. It really helps to release the tension of long hours in the studio and the various trials and tribulations of life away from home. Speaking of home, we are reaching the home stretch of working on our new CD, tentatively titled 'CuraSana'. It has really been a blessing to work with such talented and visionary musicians. We really love this new music, as it feels like both a departure and homecoming for us. A departure as we dive into new concepts and sounds in production and global culture, and a homecoming because this process has allowed us to go inside ourselves and ask what it is we truly want to say with our music, with our history, with our path as artists. we will keep you posted on developments as they, well, develop
January 28, 2007
Hi, we were thinking of Chap's burgers and beer batter fried onion rings from the downtown mall in charlottesville today......mmmm....if anyone sees Tony (the guy that owns chap's) tell him we are looking forward to his fantastic burgers and onion rings! Anyway, aside from food and its associated problems, all is good; we are working hard it's pretty stressful but anything worth doing is bound to be. we have 4 new tunes recorded and we are really pleased with the sound. Mino Mele (studio producer/engineer) is a true visionary and has been a great help in getting people in the studio. dave and I both were pretty sick this week with a stomach flu that seems to be sweeping the whole damn continent. recovery is slow but sure. not much news other than our days are filled with writing, going to the studio, calling and organizing people, interviewing people, mediating between folks, playing gigs, practicing and organizing our materials for when we return. we can't wait to be home and are looking forward to seeing all of you when we return. we can't tell you this enough! so bye for now please drop us a note we would really love to hear from some of you that we haven't heard from! Thanks to those of you who have written, your words of encouragement have really carried us through! bless you. estela
January 21, 2007
So we played a gig last night in Miraflores (Lima, Peru) with Chebo Ballumbrosio and Javier Lazo, two of the most wonderful souls and incredible musicians we have ever come accross. Without a moment of rehearsal, we just dive into the tunes and everything is transported. We are in the studio these days with the goal of finishing our new disc and getting it printed up before we leave here to go back to the United States. There is a lot of good new music happening here. We look forward to playing with these guys a lot as the future progresses.
January 12, 2007
Just thought I'd put this up for everyone to see what we are up to here. Please spread the word about our dream so that we can start raising some interest in C'ville. we look forward to seeing everyone when we get home, and we love you all-- this is what will be going out to the media here in lima, peru in the next couple of weeks. much love! Estela
January 9, 2007-- An innovative and beautiful musical project is coming to Lima in March. Lua is a U.S. based group from Charlottesville, Virginia (two hours southwest of Washington D.C), which features vocalist Estela Knott and composer and bassist David Berzonsky. They will be performing several shows in Lima with some of the most talented and creative musicians in Lima, including Chebo Ballumbrosio, Javier Lazo, Gisela Perez-Ruibal, and Moises Carpio.
“We first traveled to Peru in 2000 as part of an eighteen month journey throughout Latin America, during which time we were continually moved by the quality of the musicians and artists that we kept meeting, particularly here in Lima”, says Estela. “During our stay, we met Chebo Ballumbrosio and began playing together. Chebo is a walking instrument. His artistry and wisdom are so unique and contagious that in 2004, we decided to return to record part of a global CD project, La Sirena. He introduced us to a whole group of incredible musicians such as Javier Lazo, Gisela Perez-Ruibal, Chano Diaz, Nilo Borges, Moises Carpio and the drummer and engineer, Mino Mele, who recorded our sessions at his studio, Raiz Electronica. We had a short but incredibly magical two weeks playing with Mino and the guys, so last year we decided it was time to come back and do some shows.”
Composer and singer Javier Lazo, known for his songwriting work with Susan Baca, was very enthusiastic about the recording that they did together. “Lua is a group that projects to ‘world music’ the experience of having lived it, and you can feel that in the music, that they have lived what they play, have eaten what they play, have breathed, laughed and cried it.”
At the moment, Lua is recording a new CD at Raiz Electronica, as part of the pre-production for a documentary on Peruvian creative artists. Says Estela, “The sound is a fusion of each individual artist’s traditional roots music accented by the world music that inspires them. We are combining local African and Andean rhythms and harmonies with our own background in American funk, jazz and rock. We are putting these elements into a format that is grooving and accessible to global ears.”
As for the documentary, it is a portrait of the artists with whom they have been working, and the stories behind their music. Bassist David Berzonsky says, “We will be filming while we are here to create the pilot for a complete documentary project. It is our aim to use this film to promote cultural exchange programs for young people and artists in the United States and Latin America. When we return to the United States we plan to build a casa de cultura where we will be teaching traditional and global fusion music alongside invited artists from other parts of the world, who will share their traditional and international art forms. Why do they want to do this you ask? Dave and Estela explain, “Technology is bringing the world in all its beauty and rawness to our doorstep, and therefore it is increasingly vital that we, as artists, continue to promote connectivity amongst people of different cultures, so that we can confront the tremendous challenges we face as a planet with a true and personal understanding of our shared humanity.”
Lua will be performing at the Jazz Zone in Miraflores on Saturday, March 17th, at 10 p.m.
January 11, 2007
welcome to the new year. i am thinking that this year is going to be a positive pivot year, some good new stuff will happen, rather than just continuing on an old slough. estela and i are putting together a few shows down here for March, and have begun recording a new CD. Yeeaah! so far, we have Mino Mele on drums, Gisela Perez-Ruibal on the keys, Moises Carpio Montero on guitar, and Chebo Ballumbrosio on percussion. We are hoping to have Javier Lazo on a couple tunes as well. lets see, we ordered a video camera, so we will be filming all the stuff that is going on down here in the pre-production for a documentary. wish us many good interviews. we plan to be stateside in march. --dave b.
December 21, 2006
hi everybody. we just got to be part of something really cool. our friends down here invited us to sing in the christmas concert for the University Choir that our keyboardist Gisela teaches. so i got to sing bass in a choir, a new thing for me. it was fun. the music was ostensibly christmas music, but though it was religious music, it was largely original music, written by Gisela, and by the founder of the choir, Nilo Borges. for those of you haven't been kept up, Nilo recorded violin in our CD, but then tragically died last year. he left a pretty big hole here, but a lot of incredibly beautiful music. the music is a mix of andean and afro-peruvian song forms, blended with traditional four part choral harmonies. i would say it was a great honor to be part of this concert, filmed at the church of saint peter, in downtown Lima. Merry Christmas everybody! Have a beautiful one
December 6, 2006
Wow how Peru has changed since 2000. I remember when we arrived in Lima in those days there was great political tension. Tanks and armed soldiers in the streets along with protesters and burning tires. There were scandals involving Intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos and an army marching up from the south to force then President Fugimori out of office. Before I left in the summer of 2001 Peru had elected it's first indigenous President, Alejandro Toledo, a center-left economist, who trained at Harvard and worked for the world bank befor returning to Peru to get into politics. I remember being in Cuszco At a Hari Krishna restaurant when Toledo came down the street in the back of a pick-up truck waving at shop owners and people in the streets who had dropped whatever they were doing to come and express their support. I actually was fortunate enough to participate as an observer in this election. I Hopped a plane and took a jolting 4 hour bus ride into the andes to a predominantly indigenous village. People were coming to the polls to vote as far away as Brazil, Chile and Columbia.....people had been walking for days to vote. it was a truly amazing experience. I felt so bad for a lot of the people who had been just a few minutes short of meeting the cut off time for voting, as they had been traveling for days, by mule, foot, boat, bus, you name it! Exhausted and late, it was very dificult to turn these folks away particularly knowing that they were going to be fined for not voting. Yes, in Peru people are Obligated to vote......hmmm.....I don't know what I think about this but I do have to say that most peruvian people that I know sure know a hell of a lot more about politics than your average person from the states. Any way we are still getting a lot of feed back about how people feel about Toledo, as it seems that Toledos answer to the countries problems have been economic neoliberalism – The country’s economy has indeed grown the past few years (increasing by 6.7% in 2005) but still the countries poverty rate is over 50%. People are currently very concerned as recent elections have established that former President Allen Garcia (someone many Peruvians regard as "Caballo loco" or "a crook") will become President once again. Quite scary considering during his presidency between 1985-90 he created what most journalist describe as a complete catastrophe due to bad economic choices, the lurigancho prison massacre and many other corruption scandals. He claims to be much wiser now so only the future will tell what is in store for Peru in the years to come. On a lighter note, Lima is much more chill than before and it's a blast to be here again a much more mature and solid person. When I was traveling before it was to find myself, now I am here to make some long time dreams come true. Seeing old friends and making plans to do some creative projects together has been the bases for our past few weeks here. I'm restless to get started and doing my best to keep myself busy until dave gets back from visiting Mino in cuzco and our friends are free from their teaching obligations. Summer is in the air here and so are christmas trees and reindeer..summer and christmas hm..odd I know..also a bit odd are the reindeer, peru has some really fine Llamas, seems silly to use reindeer to deliver christmas presents to all those good PERUVIAN girls and boys, likely though for corporate christmas to put lndigenous mammals out of work for the holidays, you'd think Toledo, Being indigenous himself, would at least show homage to the poor mammals of Peru in his last days as president by standing up to those neolibrals and demanding that they employ local mammals if they want to do business in Peru for the Holidays. BUT! I guess Llamas look to much like camels and he doesn't want to be accused of supporting the terrorists? Sigh....Any way life is a gift and I think I will be buying my christmas presents locally. Happy Holidays from Lima Peru! Estela
November 16, 2006
So we have arrived in Peru. Very wonderful to be here. Stay tuned as developments unfold
November 7, 2006
alrighty everybody,
so at the moment we are gearing up to shove off to peru. we have our lima peeps waiting and we will be scheming with them to produce sounds of great beauty. we will do our utmost to make some recordings and whatnot to share with everyone. this is quite exciting stuff, for oh, how we miss peru, and its lovely creative souls. we will of course always be within reach through the magic of electronic media, so drop us a line and let us know how you are doing. i guess its election day today, so let´s just hope we can kick the bums out, and of course, let´s hope the new folks aren´t bums as well. --db
November 4, 2006
Dave and I just returned from The main land of Venezuela. magical! Merida, the Andes....no doubt President Chavez isn´t lying when he says that Venezuela is a rich country. We don´t know why but the Andes speak to us and we are connected to these mountains. it has been very inspiring to be treking in them. Word! Certainly the hardest thing I have ever done. But so worth the pain. we will try to get some pictures up soon. We also went to the llanos for a couple of days to see lots of wildlife; Birds, caiman, crocodiles, iguanas, anacondas, capybara and piranhas. we went for a crazy boat ride on this river that disappears during the dry season but during the wet season you can ride around in the boat for hours checking out wild life. we saw these beautiful pink river dolphins...no joke! they´re really crazy looking. the boat was driven by this cute little elder llanero (person of the plains) it was a trip we´ll never forget. We are glad to be back at the house recovering from tummy turmoil! Eleven more days and we are off to lima to play with our friends. We are really excited and can´t wait to get to work! Hope you all are well and drop us a line in our new guest book! peace, estela
October 17, 2006
hi everybody, so we decided to head onto the mainland from margarita and have ended up in the lovely city of merida, in the highest part of the venezuelan andes. what an incredible place! we highly recommend saving your chips to enjoy the diverse cool stuff you can do in cool places in the immediate vicinity of here. we went hiking in a lovely cloud forest the other day, and we are getting ready to do some high mountain camping. it has been nice taking a break from the music. and what of the music? well, estela has written a slew of new tunes, many of them in somewhat more of a virginia traditional sound, and i have been working on a new rhythm, a bit of a fusion of reggaeton, cumbia, and samba-reggae. i got a couple of things programmed and ready for chebo and mino to dig into, and at least two or three new tunes on deck with this sound. it should be plenty freaktastic-- i will keep you posted as tunes assert themselves and beg to be written down. elsewise, venezuela continues to be an inspiring and fascinating place, with all kinds of compelling things going on in the socio-political sphere. drop me a line and i will bore you to death with the details. until then, everyone take care and i will write more when i can. --dave b.
October 10, 2006
so here we are in venezuela. it has been a fantastic experience. yesterday we played at the primary school in la guardia, where we are living, for all the students there. it was part of their school´s anniversary celebration, and we got to share some of our music, and jam with the school´s music teachers. The kids went nuts over the American folk songs we played, screaming otra, otra, otra. tomorrow we are heading for a journey to the mainland, and if we can find a cable to download photos from our trip, we will be sure to do this. we are going to go up to the Andes, and then explore from there. Word on the street is that it is a place of great beauty and chill people. we are going to peru in a month to perform with our friends in Lima. more on that later... in the meantime, we hope everyone is well. oh yeah, we got invited to do a concert/dialogue at the local public theatre with the director of the local cultural center, and we will be doing a radio program as well, so when we get a copy of the recording, we will try to put stuff up here. until then...
July 18, 2006
I know it's been to long! Lot's of changes, beginnings and endings have happened in our lives over the past few months. I quit my social work job in december 2005 and have been teaching music to children since then. It is truly amazing, I love teaching music DUU! I should have listened to my mother a long time ago and studied music in college! Crazy me thank the creator that I am still young and can change careers. quite honestly all of the skills that I learned in my training as a social work major is so useful in teaching. It's all about good communication, I've been teaching kids about making healthy choices and now I am teaching children a healthy choice MUSIC. it all has worked out well. anyway Dave B has also been teaching music and playing in a number of groups, he is a fantastic teacher and through our teaching we have made so many wonderful friends that are for life! We are both very thankful for the people and the beautiful life that music has braught to us here. Another note is that dave and I are going to be leaving for Venezuela in august to shed on some new tunes and hang out with some margaritenos for a while. We hear the music in venezuela is kickin' so of course we've got to check it out! We hope to be back to the bay area in Spring 2007. so that's the short of where we are now. thanks to all of our east bay friends for your love and support. we are so thankful for you and all that you have shared with us Holly and Fernando, leslie, Allen and max, Shashana, jason and benyamin, lisa and jim, matt and heather, jon pruess, gayle, andy and josh, steve and jeremy,jonah and moreen, mariola, amanda and matty, lil and olivia, saram and margarita, jesus, all of my yoga family and teachers cherie carson, satsantok and prabhu nam kaur, Dr. Khalsa and Satrattan....the list is endless. thank you so much and we look forward to seeing you in the spring Abrazos grandes con paz y amor.
estela
December 2, 2005
Howdy folks! we are playing tonight at the Capoeira Arts Cafe in downtown Berkeley. This is a great place for us. it's right downtown, has a great vibe, groovy people, and a nice selection of snacks, juices, beers, wines, coffees and the like. and it only costs $5 to get in. what more could you want? we will be joined by Micha Patri and the super whup ass Matt Heulitt on guitar.
November 3, 2005
wow, it's been a while since I have written in this square! howdy yall! There has been a lot that has happened in this year that we have been living in the the most progressive part of the west.....I have to say I we are truly loving it and we have met some fantastic musicians over the summer and fall seasons. Our good friend Santiago "CoCo" Linares, who has been gracing us with his energy in our group, has been helping us with arrangements on our tunes and is truly the mentor that we had hoped to meet moving here. Truly a gifted man and we thank him endlessly for his input and wisdom. We also have been playing with a somewhat new friend of ours Micha Patri, I can't say enough about Micha, he is truly a kindred spirit. He is constantly suprising us with the wacky instruments he creates...so perfect for our music. Surely an interesting character with a lot of soul and inspiration! I have to say the most sensitive drummer I have ever met, his time is as steady as heart beat. Finally new to our musical collection is our friend John Preuss, John comes to the bay area from the mid-west, though he has been living here for a long time. John has a strong foundation in Rock and Jazz, is super lyrical in his playing and continues to blow us away with his unexpected voicing choices, not to mention he is such a sweet man, gentle and sensitive just like his playing. we would like to thank these folks for their time and energy and look forward to continuing to make beautiful music together! that's the hap's from Berkeley, CA. Drop us a line and let us know how you al are doing!