PathMakers to Peace 2021

The PathMakers to Peace award was established in 2013, to honor organizations and individuals who have played a leadership role in working to find non-violent resolutions to conflict. The name of our award, PathMakers to Peace, emphasizes that there are many roads to reaching the goal of a peaceful and just world.

Brooklyn For Peace did not hold a PathMakers to Peace Award Gala in 2020 because of Covid 19. This sobering and debilitating pandemic curtailed all of the people on the planet’s gathering activities. But on Thursday, November 18, 2021, at 7:00 pm, Brooklyn For Peace held its PathMakers to Peace Gala in the format that the world had been using for the past year and a half…..virtual. And even though we could not be “in person” the spirit to celebrate the 2021 PathMakers to Peace was present.

Art and culture are the cornerstones of what makes us human and what better way to honor the multitude of paths to peace than to present the award to Wynton Marsalis. Jazz lovers, peace and justice activists, members and friends of Brooklyn For Peace truly showed their support of our organization and stepped up to demonstrate that we still can honor individuals and organizations who have played a leadership role in working to find nonviolent resolutions to conflict, whether “in person” or “virtual”.

This year’s honoree:

Wynton Marsalis is an internationally acclaimed musician trumpeter, composer, bandleader, educator, and leading advocate of American culture. He has created and performed an expansive range of music from quartets to big bands, chamber music ensembles to symphony orchestras and tap dance to ballet, expanding the vocabulary for jazz and classical music with a vital body of work that places him among the world’s finest musicians and composers.

Marsalis’ core beliefs and foundation for living are based on the principles of jazz. He promotes individual creativity (improvisation), collective cooperation (swing), gratitude and good manners (sophistication), and faces adversity with persistent optimism (the blues). With his evolved humanity and through his selfless work, Marsalis has elevated the quality of human engagement for individuals, social networks and cultural institutions throughout the world.

Marsalis has won at least nine Grammy Awards, and his Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He is the only musician to win a Grammy Award in two categories, Jazz and Classical, during the same year.

He co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln Center. In July 1996, due to its significant success, Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) was installed as a new constituent of Lincoln Center, equal in stature with the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Ballet – a historic moment for jazz as an art form and for Lincoln Center as a cultural institution.

He presently serves as Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and Director of Jazz Studies at The Juilliard School and continues to compose, tour, teach, and perform.

Mr. Marsalis’ biography is extensive! We couldn’t put it all here. Please visit his website at www.wyntonmarsalis.org to find out more.

Being a virtual event, we wish to thank everyone who donated their time and energy in making this event happen, behind and in front of the scene. Charlotte Phillips, Betta Broad, Sam Koprak, Melissa Corbett.
A special thank you to Michelle Smith for signing on as the event coordinator. Our advertisers and sponsors and of course those who are attending this evening. And to those who still placed ads and donated but were unable to be online for the event.

A special thank you to Veronica Nunn for emceeing and Betta Broad for her encouraging and inspiring words to become involved with this peace organization and the movement toward a better world.

The link to the video will be sent to everybody who bought tickets, ads, sponsorships, or donated and will be sent to anybody who donates $25 or more in our Campaign for the Future of Brooklyn For Peace.

The full PathMakers to Peace virtual program is available online and is also located just below.

Please be sure to patronize our advertisers!

Thank you to the following for their extra effort to make this event a success!

Thank you to our sponsors for their contributions!