“Hearts Together Make Music for Children”: Benefit concert at the National and University Library in Zagreb
On 10 December 2016 (19.00, grand lobby) the National and University Library in Zagreb will host Hearts Together Make Music for Children, a benefit concert organised by the Library and the National and University Library in Zagreb Foundation.
The concert will be given by Joe Meixner, Croatia-born world-renowned pianist based in Austria, who will be joined by the Croatian singer Miro Ungar.
The concert is being organised with the purpose of raising funds required by the Children’s Hospital Zagreb for the purchase of a highly sophisticated hospital bed providing the highest standards of medical care for children recovering from severe burns, as well as for the provision of virtual reality devices that are used as tremendously helpful tools in pain management with small patients going through demanding medical treatments.
Although every human has a natural leaning towards helping his or her fellow human beings, the demands of our everyday lives distract us from being there for others and we often end up neglecting even the needs of our closest ones, let alone the needs of those who we do not know. Fortunately, Christmas holiday season offers an ideal opportunity for making a conscious effort to open our hearts towards the youngest among all the needy and by coming together through music make our contribution to a happier and altogether better world, making our own selves feeling better and more useful at the same time.
Tickets for this special concert are available at the Library’s User Registration Service (Monday to Friday, 8.00 – 21.00) for a minimum donation of HRK 100,00 (EUR 13,31), while everyone interested in details concerning the concert may send their inquiries to zaklada@nsk.hr.
Joe Meixner, by all means an extraordinary artist, composer, arranger and producer, is first and foremost a pianist, who has built his musical career in the world’s leading centres of music culture ranging from Vienna to Los Angeles. Although known as a jazz virtuoso, his passion for the piano made him go beyond the limits of any of the firmly established musical traditions and create his own unique artistic style. He has so far collaborated with great names of Croatia’s music scene such as Arsen Dedić, Radojka Šverko, Zdenka Kovačiček, and performed as part of the famous Croatian rock operas Grička vještica (The Witch of Grič) and Gubec beg. Meixner has managed several musical ensembles along with a music production company specialising in jazz, blues and soul projects. He collaborated with stars such as Trini Lopez, wrote music for the Disney and Fox channels and gave special performances for celebrities such as Kevin Costner, Larry Flint, Ursula Andress and others. Taking part in Life Ball, a charity initiative focusing on fighting AIDS, Meixner shared the stage with such musical greats as Elton John and Lisa Stansfield. He also played at the Wiener Musikverein, the hall of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. His performances, characterised by utmost refinement and invigorating freshness, offer his listeners unique interpretations of the works of Chopin, Brahms, Claude Debussy, Joaquín Rodrigo and Sting. Meixner is also famous for his explorations of the therapeutic effects of music, as part of which he has developed a unique method of music therapy called piano medicine.
During his visit to the National and University Library in Zagreb in August 2016, Mr. Meixner donated his works to the Library’s Foreign Croatica Collection, where they have become permanently available to all interested Library’s users.
As Fyodor Dostoyevsky determinedly put it through the mouth of one of the most famous characters of world literature, “Beauty will save the world”. Let us all show at least some of that same determination in doing our part to help make it happen.
