January 2024 Newsletter ~ Happy New Year!
  Happy New Year to youmy dear friends!How are you all doing? 2023 was full of good times balanced by challenging ones for me ~ our most exciting Stretto Piano Festival yet, progress with recording projects, the deaths of some important friends and facing the en masse grief and alarm inspired by world events.Reading and watching the news often feels like a health hazard with wars in the international headlines and frequent political strife on our turf. Our friends and families have become havens of comfort and culture is as much an outlet for outrage as it is to inspire introspection and beauty. I believe we can open a door to a more hopeful future, as gradually as it might come, even with global tragedies and the rushing advent of pervasive AI whose influence will soon be evident in our lives more than ever. Those of us who see the glass half full say, “We can be a force of light before things get worse. The light is coming…it just has to.” It is up to us to make changes for the good. We can’t sit around hoping politicians and corporate unicorns will solve major issues for us, so I urge you to brainstorm with your communities whenever you have time. When we are aware and are willing to take on dark times with courage, we can create new systems and possibilities for the good. I have more and more deadlines and projects slated for specific times in 2024 and I am grateful to all of you who have supported my music, my filmmaking, and my new work as an entrepreneur and producer of concerts. January 1, 2024, is the release date of “Destroying Angel,” a six-minute scripted short film without dialogue set to the haunting, eponymous song written by my colleague and friend, Neil Cabana. I was intrigued when I came upon the song on a random Facebook post some years back while working on the script. My goal was to write a short film that communicates a story by physical action, sets, and visual filmmaking only, set to music that enhances the story, and then to perform it with actors I respect and admire. This piece is as much a sympathetic cry for help as a call to action to anyone who might happen to have addiction in his or her life in any way. It is not for children. Parents, please only share with kids under 18 under parental supervision or not at all – the story is graphic and contains adult content. While it is dark, it aims to bring light via awareness. Let us know your impressions! I will share your comments with Neil. if you write to me. Neil and I made music on stage and in the studio when he was a New Yorker in the early 2000s. He now lives in Los Angeles and we are happy to be finally presenting this collaboration we worked on some years ago. Yours with love,Hannah  WATCH Destroying AngelWith the rise in the use and abuse of opioids and death due to opioids, songwriter Neil Cabana and I are making an effort to raise awareness with our creative work.The film/music video, “Destroying Angel,” is a scripted short made in hopes of helping addicts and their loved ones to find solutions, to inspire potential drug users to think twice before getting in deep, or to think twice before getting into drugs at all. We hope you enjoy our collaboration and might embrace the change we would like to bring. I lost two female friends to addictions and soon after was inspired to write this piece with acclaimed filmmaker David Spaltro, casting him as the male lead. Neil’s song eerily matched the script which made the editing process a flow-state experience. My editing partner, Tracy Landon, was a student at The School of Visual Arts in NYC and he helped us keep costs down in terms of renting equipment, locations, and our 14-piece crew. Tracy has since become a busy pro gaffer/electrician in film production. The film opened the New Jersey Film Festival and was also featured at the Long Island International Film Expo. At the same time that we completed Destroying Angel and began to submit it to festivals, I became completely consumed with caring for my dad and making the documentary,My Father’s House, A Journey of Love and Memory for several years. Huge THANK YOU to David Spaltro, cast members Pete Smith and the great Martin Ewens, plus our brilliant cinematographer, Claudio Rietti. ~ Hannah Reimann and Neil CabanaLISTEN to the song2024 Releases and EventsExact dates, times & locations TBA February 9 Pre- Valentine’s Day weekend event with Lucky Selectism retail in Meatpacking, NYCRelease of a newly recorded full-band version of the single, Mi Corazòn February 25 – Stretto Piano Concerts Rachmaninoff videos April & May – Release of new singles, Take Me To The Sun and Doin’ Good on all platforms May 25 – June 2 ~ The Fourth International Stretto Piano Festivalwith live concerts in NYC, Dallas, Stuttgart, Bayreuth, The festival will include an EP Release party and concert promoting my new recording of all the new singles with a huge thank you to the Cafè Royal Cultural Foundation for its support and for selecting me as a granteeMore NEWSAn important obituaryThings I like to share from places I followRemembering Dr. Donald Marcuse This newsletter is dedicated to Dr. Donald Marcuse, one of the Reimanns’ closest family friends. Donald was a brilliant psychoanalyst, a lover of life, nature, great food, music, art, and culture. He loved Vinalhaven Island, a place which he introduced to our family and where we had many great times. He and my mom, Dr. Myunghee Kim Reimann were colleagues in New York City in the 1960s when they both were training in psychiatry so my parents and he were close friends before my sister, Kim and I were born. They were neighbors when my family lived in NYC when I was born. It is with a heavy heart that I write that Donald passed away on December 28, peacefully in his sleep. I have been blessed with having him, his wife Julie, his five kids, and eleven grandkids in my life, many of them, for many decades. I miss him very much and send prayers to the family.  The Center for Humane Technology Created by Tristan Harris & Aza Raskin These guys and their team are my heroes. I urge everyone to listen to their podcast, Your Undivided Attention, and to peruse their website. They have taught me about the attention economy. Yes, attention is a commodity in case you have forgotten that while posting and scrolling. Instagram and Meta exist in part to harvest our attention and to make exponential sales and sell ads for their profit, ignoring the harm, corruption, and mental health risks this creates. We as consumers and creators need to take a stand to steer it in the right direction, especially our future with Artificial Intelligence. The mission of CHT isto align technology with humanity’s best interests. “We envision a world with technology that respects our attention, improves our well-being, and strengthens communities.” From “Our Story” on the humane tech website: “Our journey began in 2013 when Tristan Harris, then a Google Design Ethicist, created the viral presentation, “A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users’ Attention.” The presentation, followed by two TED talks and a 60 Minutes interview, sparked the Time Well Spent movement and laid the groundwork for the founding of the Center for Humane Technology (CHT) as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2018. While many people are familiar with our work through The Social Dilemma, our focus goes beyond the negative effects of social media.We work to expose the drivers behind all extractive technologies steering our thoughts, behaviors, and actions. We believe that by understanding the root causes of harmful technology, we can work together to build a more humane future.” March 2023 documentary, the AI Dilemma: Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin discuss how existing A.I. capabilities already pose catastrophic risks to a functional society, how A.I. companies are caught in a race to deploy as quickly as possible without adequate safety measures, and what it would mean to upgrade our institutions to a post-A.I. world. This presentation is from a private gathering in San Francisco on March 9th, 2023 with leading technologists and decision-makers with the ability to influence the future of large-language model A.I.s. This presentation was given before the launch of GPT-4. We encourage viewers to consider calling their political representatives to advocate for holding hearings on AI risk and creating adequate guardrails.Watch the AI Dilemma |
