CHUCK MANGIONE
Chuck Mangione concert, party to honor lives lost on Flight 3407
The Chuck Mangione concert Friday at Kleinhans is sure to be a bittersweet event for both the band and audience. Originally scheduled for Feb. 13, the concert was postponed after two members of Mangione’s band, guitarist Coleman T. Mellett and sax and flute player Gerry Niewood, died when Continental Connection Flight 3407 crashed on Long Street in Clarence Center.
Niewood and Mellett, as well as the other 48 people who died on the plane and in the house it struck that cold night, will be remembered in a free community party to follow the concert in Kleinhans’ Mary Seaton Room. A centerpiece of that event will be the performance of the evocative “Love Knows No Boundaries,” cowritten by local musician Noa Bursie and writer and radio host Christina Abt.
Admission is free, and food and drinks will be exchanged for tickets priced at $1 to $3, Abt says. All funds raised will go to the Town of Clarence Flight 3407 Memorial Fund.
Festival East Concerts, Chuck Mangione and the BPO paid the production costs for the post-concert party and also donated 200 tickets to the victims’ families and neighbors of the crash site.
Abt and Bursie became songwriting collaborators as a result of their Facebook friendship.
A few days after the crash, Abt read some “particularly inspiring thoughts” Bursie had posted on her Facebook page. The two began e-mailing each other, swapping bits of poetry, and Abt finally said, “Someday we should write a song together.”
By the next day, Bursie was using lyrics the two had crafted for “Love Knows No Boundaries,” a soft guitar-driven melody with the repeated chorus, “Of this we are certain— love never dies.”
Abt put a call in to Mangione’s manager, and the idea of performing the song in conjunction with the rescheduled Mangione concert was born.
“Love Knows No Boundaries” was first performed for victims’ families, crash site neighbors, first responders and other volunteers and employees who worked at the crash site March 19 at Eastern Hills Wesleyan Church. Those who attended were given copies of the CD, and, perhaps more important, a chance to talk.
“We tried to make it feel like something very family-oriented,” says Abt, “and at the end of the night we actually had to ask people to leave, because it was the first time the families and the Long Street residents had gotten together, and they really wanted that time to talk.”
It was recorded as a music video April 8 featuring Bursie, Gretchen Schulz and Bass Reeves and vocals by The Gayle Sisters, Jerry Livingston, Ken Kaufman, Emile Latimer and Ella Robinson and the New Beginnings Gospel Choir. They will sing again on Friday, and Ben Baia and other musicians and vocalists will perform.
Food and beverages for Friday’s event were donated by Henry’s Restaurant, Drew Cerza, Certo Brothers, Whiterock Distilleries and Passport Wine & Spirits.
Friday, the CD will go on sale for $10 at Wegmans, Barnes and Noble in Clarence, Spot Coffee, Record Theater and Jenss gift shops. All proceeds go to the memorial fund.
The “Love Has No Boundaries” group has already raised more than $2,000 to fund the memorial, which, Abt says, “without much distribution or a lot of advertising, felt pretty good to us.”
Abt says she has visited the memorial at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and was impressed by the continuing community response to the site. She says the crash of Flight 3407 “is a historical moment in our community, and all of us at some point or another will need a place to go to remember it, and our children will need to know what happened and how this community acted and reacted.”
Tickets for the Feb. 13 performance of Chuck Mangione with the BPO will be honored. To purchase tickets for Friday’s concert, which begins at 8 p. m., call the BPO Box Office at 885-5000 or go to www.bpo.org .
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