On Saturday, October 1st, Living With Harmony hosted our first fundraiser.   We were not planning on doing this right away, but thanks to Daria Joanna, we got the idea for our afternoon social and concert fundraiser.

A couple of years ago,  I was sitting next to Daria Joanna at a Brit Floyd concert.  It wasn’t long before Daria’s passion for helping animals became apparent and an instant friendship started. Daria, an accomplished cellist, who has been playing the cello since childhood, approached me a few months ago and suggested we put together a charity concert so people could come together and listen to an incredible variety of music while learning about Living With Harmony.

Thanks to Daria’s help and resourcefulness, Living With Harmony was able to feature some of the most passionate and talented musicians in Colorado, including in order of appearance: Daria Joanna, Pamela Weng, Missing Lynx, featuring Kirk Glienke and Andy Pratt, Wendy Woo and Band of Life.  We had all of these musicians in one place for the afternoon and the energy and experience was amazing.  Living With Harmony is very grateful that these musicians shared their passion for helping animals and their talents with us.   We want to make sure to express our appreciation to Gene Morris who provided his expertise, sound equipment and his piano keyboard so we could have sound and a microphone.
We were thrilled to have legendary hometown artist, Wendy Woo performing for us and participating at our event.

If you missed the fundraiser, or would like to see the musicians again, please click on their names above to go to their websites (if available) so you can see them or purchase their cd’s.  Some of them play at venues across the Metro Denver area, or are available for events.  Daria Joanna teaches private cello lessons and plays music at La Dolce Vita in Arvada on the second Sunday of the month.

At the fundraiser, we debuted our new logo.  This logo has been in the works for a long time and we feel the new logo captures more of what we represent.  The logo features several different species’ footprints including a human, a deer, a horse and a cat.  We want to convey the message that we are trying to live in peace and harmony with all species including wildlife and domestic animals, as well as with nature and one another.  We are so grateful to John Beske of VeganStreet who designed our beautiful logo that we are very proud of.  John Beske  offers many services including website design, logo design, package design and many other services.

Some people may have noticed that we did not offer any bottled water at our event.  Plastic bottles and plastic waste are polluting our oceans and our earth and we always seek to find and offer alternatives that are easy to use and gentler on the earth.  We provided filtered water that was freshly made in pitchers made by Clearly Filtered.  These water filters take out many contaminants in the water including chlorine, lead, cadmium and 90% of fluoride.   We hope people enjoyed this clean and tasty water.  Eco-Products generously provided 100% compostable  plates, cups and bowls so we could minimize our waste and return these bio-degradable products back to the soil through the commercially available composting services that are available in Boulder.
We got many wonderful donations for our silent auction from many authors, companies and individuals that are too numerous to name.  One of our biggest supporters was Emily Deschanel of the television show “Bones.”  She donated a replica of a human skull that was featured on the set of her show.  It was engraved with Season 12 on a placard and signed by Emily and her co-star David Boreanaz.  The skull definitely caught some attention in our silent auction.  Thank you, Emily!

We had a special guest in the audience – vegan ultra-marathoner Scott Jurek.  Scott talked about his support for John Pierre and Living With Harmony.   He truly is one of the greatest ultra-endurance runners in history and is a compassionate and loving animal advocate.
We want to express our sincere thanks and gratitude to everyone who contributed to our event, including all the amazing musicians, volunteers, sponsors, donors and of course our wonderful guests.  It was such an incredible experience to have so many friends and supporters in one room and we could not have done this without you.