Joy Alive!
with featured guest Naomi Newman
In-Person at The Marsh Berkeley Cabaret
Performers:
Barbara Borden
Susanne DiVincenzo
Terry Garthwaite
Naomi Newman (special guest)
Click for Tickets
November 3, 2024
Sunday at 4pm
Ticket Information
Tickets: $25 general admission
Online ticket sales close 2 hours before each performance,
and additional tickets may be available for purchase at the door.
90 minutes | No Intermission | All Ages
Please do not bring infants to the show
Please read our
Health, Safety and COVID-19 Information
Our commitment to our patrons
About the Show
Joy Alive! Is a synthesis of Terry Garthwaite from The Joy of Cooking and Barbara Borden and Susanne DiVincenzo from Alive! Both were influential bands from the 60’s to the 80’s. Now enjoy the inventive 20’s version of this band in concert. Special guest, Naomi Newman of The Traveling Jewish Theatre will be performing in this show.
Spreading joy through music, heart to heart, is key to the members of Joy Alive! You’ll hear a variety of Terry’s original songs, most of which are uplifting. Those that venture into darker areas are surrounded by positive edges.
Artist Biographies
Terry Garthwaite
Terry Garthwaite (guitar, lead vocals) is an internationally known singer, songwriter, composer, producer, and teacher Her recording career dates back to the late 1960s when she and Toni Brown formed the rock group Joy of Cooking. She recorded several albums with the band, and then a dozen others by herself or in collaboration with other jazz and blues musicians.
Terry has also produced recordings by other artists including Jasmine, Rosalie Sorrels, Rhiannon, Nicholas, Glover & Wray, Hunter Davis, Robin Flower, and Ferron, whose Garthwaite-produced Shadows on a Dime was awarded four stars by Rolling Stone.
In performance she has shared the stage with such artists as BB King, Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt, The Band, Allen Ginsberg, Santana, Rosalie Sorrels and writer Bobbie Hawkins at venues that include Carnegie Hall, the Joseph Papp Theater, the Hollywood Bowl, and Canadian Folk Festivals.
Terry’s recent recordings and writing reflect an awareness of the healing nature of music. In 1992 she recorded her critically acclaimed Affirhythms – rhythmic affirmation chantsongs, and followed it in 2000 with Sacred Circles, songs of hope and heart.
In 2006, Terry began collaborating again with Toni Brown to put together a Joy of Cooking compilation. They pored through old tapes of live performances and studio forays–from their earliest beginnings in 1968–to find the best material with the best performances. The result is the double CD Back to Your Heart, one disc of studio takes of never-released songs, and the other a live Berkeley concert from the early ’70s.
She’s published a book, Joy of Sound – Explorations in Awareness Through Sound and Song, that includes vocal games/exercises and a CD of chants, as well as a couple of small books of Alliterhythms–pithy positive songs and sayings in alliteration. Most of her songs are available in her songbooks. Terry’s music is an array of songs and sounds that encourages empowerment and delight, and radiates the healing nature of music. She currently leads vocal retreats, drum circles, and classes in singing together, playing with sound, and digging the musical garden.
Barbara Borden
Barbara Borden (percussion, back-up vocals) has been drumming since the age of ten—a passion that has taken her along many musical avenues: performing and recording with many musicians, dancers, authors, storytellers, actors, poets and healers; member of the band Alive! (eight years of touring and recording); composer (Beauty in the Beat, All Hearts Beating, Lady of the Serpent Skirt); solo performer (Borden’s “percussion play,” She Dares to Drum); drumming for peace in Croatia and Serbia during the war in Bosnia in 1994… performing in refugee camps and at peace concerts. Upon her return to the U.S., Barbara continued to participate in peace actions at home.
Born into a Jewish immigrant family, Barbara was the kid sister of the show business Borden Twins, who performed on TV shows from the 1950s through the ’80s. Given a drumset by her sisters, Barbara soon established herself as a hotshot “girl drummer,” performing at the Hollywood Bowl and in nightclubs in L.A. and San Francisco. In the ’70s, Barbara found herself in the middle of the feminist cultural revolution as the drummer in a women’s jazz band, Alive!
Ms. Borden has enjoyed teaching many aspects of drumming for the last 35 years. By facilitating drum circles and councils, workshops/clinics, retreats, private and group lessons and mentor programs, she has seen the results that build strength, health and connection in the individual as well as the community. A timeless spiritual dimension of her art opened up when Barbara gave a heart-shaped drum that had been made especially for her to a woman drummer of the Suquamish tribe who had responded deeply to the sound of the Heart Drum.
Barbara has become a citizen of the world, traveling and drumming in the former Croatia and Serbia in the midst of the civil war in Bosnia and in Zimbabwe at a time of brutal dictatorship and economic collapse. There she was initiated by African healer, “Mandaza” Kandemwa in 2001. To people in both countries, amid their suffering, Barbara brought joy with drumbeat diplomacy. In 2008, in the wake of the deterioration of U.S. and Russian relations over Russia’s military stance toward Georgia, Barbara traveled to its small neighboring republic, Khakassia, in southern Siberia where she performed with her band, “Fools Gold” and was initiated into shamanism by Tatiana Kobezhikova in this beautiful, rural land.
The beat goes on with Barbara playing drums and singing backup vocals with her bandmate from Alive!, Susanne DiVincenzo, bass, cello & backup vocals in the trio, Joy Alive! featuring the music and voice of Terry Garthwaite, one of the 2 women leading the Joy of Cooking rock band in the 70’s. Barbara knows the power of music and drumming to bring all people together in joy and aliveness!
Susanne DiVincenzo
Susanne DiVincenzo (bass, cello and back up vocals) is a founding member of the all women jazz quintet, Alive! Which performed internationally in the ‘70s and ‘80s. She is currently involved in many musical projects: teaching workshops at the CA Jazz Conservatory in Berkeley, CA and playing in the trio with Terry Garthwaite and Barbara Borden called “Joy Alive!” She currently performs the Great American Songbook with Michele Korb (guitar/vocals) and Barb Raboy (reeds) in the Jazz Trio, Take 3.
Together with Barbara Borden and Naomi Newman, at Live Oak Theatre, Berkeley, she co-wrote and performed the music for the new play, Between Worlds, starring and written by Naomi Newman and produced by the Yiddish Ensemble Theatre, about the lesbian poet and Warsaw ghetto survivor, Irena Klepfisz. A film of the performance is currently available at https://klezcalifornia.org/between-worlds-free-view/ password: NoShare
Susanne plays bass with Melba’s Kitchen, a Bay Area 14-woman big band featuring the compositions and arrangements of Melba Liston and Mary Lou Williams from the 1940s.
She is the principal bass for the Mill Valley Philharmonic and for the National Women’s Music Festival Orchestra.
Naomi Newman
Before co-founding A Traveling Jewish Theatre, Newman had careers as a concert singer, television actor (two original Star Treks, among others), improvisational theater director, and psychotherapist. For thirty-three years with A Traveling Jewish Theatre (ATJT), she changed hats between director, playwright, and performer, winning awards in each field. She created and performed WORLD ON FIRE: Poems and music about the Climate Crisis.
In 2007 The East Bay Express voted Newman Best Actress of the Year for her performance in Martin Sherman’s solo play, ROSE. In 2009 Ms Newman received the Creative Achievement Award from the city of Mill Valley. In 2010 she was honored with a Tikkun award from Tikkun Magazine and the Network of Spiritual Progressives for outstanding work in theatre. The San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum will soon publish an oral history about her life and career.