Tag: Kristina Puga

From “Thunder Cats” to acupuncture and following your gut

Anthony Giovanniello (Photo/Adam French)

Anthony Giovanniello grew up in an Italian-American household in Queens, NY, but for as long as he can remember, he says he’s had an affinity for Asian culture.

“My parents thought they picked the wrong kid up from the hospital,” says Giovanniello laughing. “We were Catholic. So Friday nights we used to order all these vegetable dishes at the Chinese restaurant. They always sent me to pick up the food, but I would take so long because I would spend so much time talking to the owner about China.”

His parents let him embrace his love of everything Asian, however. Giovanniello started his first yoga class at 15, and then took martial arts, and finally when he was 19, he took his first trip to Japan.

“It solidified my understanding that my love of Asia was more than this life,” says Giovanniello.

Today, at 60, he is an acupuncturist at a clinic in Nashville, Tenn., as well as the founder of the non-profit Acupuncture Ambassadors which organizes sustainable acupuncture schools, training programs and treatment clinics for the care of refugees, victims of violence, and the poor around the world. In October, he will be going to help heal the trauma victims of the Nepal earthquake.

“I love Nepal – it’s one of my favorite places in the world,” says Giovanniello. “Thank God my friends are alive, but most of them are homeless.”

He says he’s been to Cambodia, Vietnam, and many other places throughout Asia, but Nepal is where he goes most often.

“I’ve been four times years in that past 10 years,” says the soft-spoken healer. “I feel at home there. The first time I went there was in 1998. It was this incredible feeling. There was a square where the King of Kathmandu had his court, and when I walked out of the taxi, I started crying like I came home.”

Giovanniello says he knew he wanted to be an acupuncturist when he was 20 – right after he had his first acupuncture treatment.

“But then I realized there were no schools to study acupuncture in the U.S. around 1980 – you had to go to China,” says Giovanniello. “You probably spend 5 or 7 years there, and then you come back and maybe you don’t find a job. So I put that idea to the side.”

Since he grew up playing music and was in a band through his 20s, he was very familiar with recording equipment. It made sense to start a career in audio production. Eventually, he became a soundtrack supervisor for the animated television series, “Thunder Cats.”

“I loved the animation which came from Japan, but late in 1999, I was in a place where life didn’t work anymore,” Giovanniello remembers. “I thought, ‘If I don’t do this acupuncture thing it’s never going to happen.’ I was 45. I went back to school in January 2000…I was determined to graduate by the time I was 50, and I did. I have a skill, but I feel it’s more of a calling, because I’m passionate about it.”

He explains that acupuncture – a form of alternative medicine involving inserting thin needles into the body at specific acupuncture points – was originally created side by side with the Chinese religious tradition of Daoism.

“You embrace the earth and nature and believe that mankind is at one with nature,” says Giovanniello. “Most won’t say it’s a spiritual practice, but it can be if you allow it. It works on animals and they have no belief systems. Most thoroughbreds have their own acupuncturists.”

He says the most memorable moment of his career so far was when he was working on the streets of Nepal, and a woman brought her 30-year-old son who had been such a severe alcoholic that he ruined his liver and was crippled.

“They came in a cab, and he needed four men to pick him up. He screamed the whole way being carried,” remembers Giovanniello. “We thought the needles were going to hurt him so I thought the best I can do is do ear acupuncture. He laid there for a couple of hours with the needles in his ears. The second day he came, and he was a little better, not screaming. He came every day. By the fourth day, he got himself onto the bed himself. By the fifth day, we were putting needles everywhere, and by the sixth day, he was walking himself to the cab. Acupuncture allows your body to kick in the hormones we already have to heal our own bodies. At the end of 7 days, he was still very weak, but he was able to get himself into the cab. It was an amazing transformation.”

Anthony performing ear acupuncture in a monastery in Nepal.

He says he started his non-profit organization, right in his living room, when he realized that acupuncture was more of a calling than a business.

“It’s been an amazing journey,” reflects Giovanniello. “My first ‘get my feet wet’ mission was in a Navajo reservation in Arizona. I went there, and it solidified everything to me. It is interesting, fun and helpful..it gets me up in the morning.”

Currently, Giovanniello works five days a week at the clinic, and his two days off he spends fundraising for Acupuncture Ambassadors.

What piece of advice about life would he tell his younger self if he could?

“I would tell my younger self never to be afraid of doing what you thought was right.”

June 10, 2015
“La Bamba,” “Zoot Suit” writer on the importance of building community

Luis Valdez (Courtesy El Teatro Campesino)

Do you remember reading the play, “Zoot Suit” in high school or watching the movie “La Bamba” (1987), based on the life of 1950’s rocker Ritchie Valens, starring Lou Diamond Phillips and Esai Morales? They were both written by multi-award winning playwright and director, Luis Valdez.

He is also the founder of the longest running Chicano theater in the U.S. El Teatro Campesino is located in the rural community of San Juan Bautista, Calif. – approximately 150 miles northwest from where he was born to migrant farm worker parents.

“I was born in 1940 in a labor camp in Delano…the west side of Delano was separated by the railroad tracks,” says Valdez, now 74. “The Asians, Mexicans, and African Americans were on the west side, and the White people lived on the east side of the tracks.”

Valdez says he remembers understanding as early as age six, that he was born into a segregated land.

Years later, in 1955, he remembers the segregation continued. There was a young man who was called “C.C.” who decided to sit in the middle of the movie theater and not in the section designated for “non-whites.”

“The police took him away,” says Valdez. “There was no law – it was custom. They released him, and the following week, a whole group went and sat in the middle of the theater. Years later, I went to work with the UFW [United Farm Workers], and my mom said, ‘Don’t you know who C.C. is? He is Cesar Chavez.”

It was in 1965, while volunteering with the UFW, that Valdez founded El Teatro Campesino – a theater troupe for farm workers and students. The theater, he says, served as a way to inform, educate and also provide laughter during very hard times for strikers.

El Teatro Campesino performing in the 1960’s. (Courtesy El Teatro Campesino)

“I’ve seen the evolution of theater, film and television,” says Valdez regarding his continually growing work with El Teatro Campesino, which still continues today. “My focus has been on historical periods so people can know who we are today…now we’re focused on developing the young.”

Valdez says it was school that changed the trajectory of his life. It was his mom who sent him and his brother to school one day with their lunches packed in a little brown paper bag – a luxury, he says, in those days.

“I used to take care of my little bag, but one day my bag was missing,” Valdez remembers back to the first grade. “My teacher said, ‘I took it. It’s for a mask I’m making for a play.’ I forgave her for the bag, and the next week, I auditioned and I got my first part in a play – a monkey. I was looking forward to my first debut in front of the world on a Monday. I told my mom, and she said, ‘We’re leaving Friday. We were being evicted.”

Valdez says he was six and devastated. However, that episode in his life was crucial, because it gave him the insatiable desire to pursue theater for the rest of his life.

“It was at San Jose State University that I began to write and produce,” says Valdez. “I wrote my first full-length play there, and just last month, my son produced ‘Zoot Suit’ – it ran two weeks. It’s come full circle – 50 years after I graduated.”

What piece of life advice would Valdez tell his younger self if he could?

“I would tell my young self, and others, that it’s important to develop people skills…It comes with giving respect when respect is due. Genius is not an excuse to mistreat other people. A true genius is a genius of compassion and humility…I’m happy to say that El Teatro Campesino is composed of 12 people who have been together the past 40 years. They have had other careers but are still pitching in and helping out. In an odd way, that keeps us young. That’s a great feeling. It’s amazing to me. They’ve become maestras and maestros in their own right…We got a slow start incorporating women into the group, but some of our greatest collaborators have been with women. I would talk to my younger self about the importance of that…These are lessons they I’ve learned along the way. We are all human, and we all have a heart.

May 13, 2015
The co-founder of P.F. Chang’s shares his recipe to success

Co-founder of P.F. Chang’s Philip Chiang (Courtesy Philip Chiang)

Philip Chiang always wanted to be an artist, but life had other plans for him. At 67, he is the co-founder and consultant for the 200-plus Chinese restaurant chain, with a nearly $1 billion revenue, P.F. Chang’s.

Chiang’s parents left China in 1949 to flee Mao Zedong’s communist dictatorship, and so Chiang spent most of his childhood in Japan. At 14, he migrated, with his mother and sister, to San Francisco’s Chinatown.

He credits his success today to his mother, Cecilia Chiang, who has been nicknamed “the mother of Chinese food in America” and is also winner of the 2013 James Beard Foundation Award for lifetime achievement.

Cecilia Chiang, 95 (Courtesy Philip Chiang)

At a time when the U.S. was only familiar with Cantonese cuisine, she introduced Mandarin cuisine of Northern China by opening the Mandarin restaurant in the 1960’s.

“She wasn’t a restaurateur – she just somehow got into it,” says Chiang proudly about his mother. “She became very successful and well-known – so things worked out. I think the intention was just to pay the bills.”

He goes on to explain that his mother was the seventh daughter of an aristocratic family. She grew up in a large courtyard home characteristic of upper class families, but the family lost everything during the Chinese Communist Revolution.

“She’s a survivor,” says Chiang, who learned most things, including recipes, from his mother.

While he was an art student in Los Angeles, Chiang used to help his mom out at the Mandarin, when it moved to Beverly Hills.

“I was the busboy and did miscellaneous stuff around the restaurant,” says Chiang, not knowing at the time how that would come in handy later on.

The experience actually inspired him to open his own restaurant, reflecting his own personality – simple and laid back. He called it Mandarette.

“It was a more casual, younger cafe,” says Chiang. “I liked the fancier food that my mom had, but I craved more everyday food – casual dining, instead of fancy that my mom was doing.

He opened Mandarette in Los Angeles where, he says, everyone is on a health kick.

“The food was lighter fresher, more health-oriented…and that’s what attracted people,” says Chiang.

As luck would have it, one of his customers there was Paul Fleming – owner of the famed Ruth Chris Steakhouse. Fleming became a big fan of Chiang’s food and asked him to help him open up a Chinese food restaurant in Scottsdale, Ariz. That was the first P.F. Chang’s which opened in 1993.

“It was never meant to be a chain,” recalls Chiang. “After we did the first and second one, there was still no thought to do a chain. It just kept expanding, and we went along with it, and it grew.”

The Los Angeles resident says what he believes led to the chain’s success is that they serve the Chinese food which he himself likes to eat.

“Clean and simple,” says Chiang, who is now helping P.F. Chang’s with its international expansion when he’s not pursuing his art career (he just joined Instagram with the name “ChiangPhilip” to display his latest paintings inspired by nature). “I’m still doing the same thing 20 years later.”

He says being a restaurateur is a very difficult career, but his recipe to success is simple:

“In the end, I think people don’t need something different, just something really good,” says Chiang. “Very few people can do something well – even if it’s just a burger, or a salad – just do it really well.”

February 25, 2015
Jazz piano legend advises to talk less and listen more

Bertha Hope (Photo/Richard Somerville)

Bertha Hope has been surrounded by music all her life. Her father Clinton (Henry) Rosemond was a dramatic baritone singer who traveled all over Europe to perform, she married two legendary jazz musicians – pianist, Elmo Hope and bassist, Walter Booker, and she herself became an award-winning jazz pianist.

In late 2014, after a full career touring Europe and Japan and playing with a diverse group of artists, Hope was named a Living Legend by the Bronx Music Heritage Center at age 78.

Originally from Los Angeles, she has lived in New York City since she moved there with her husband Elmo in 1961. She says her first husband was one of her biggest musical influences, and they met while he was touring in LA.

“I was trying to learn his music, as I was beginning to be interested in the Be Bop era – listening to Billy Holiday and modern jazz quartets,” remembers Hope. “I had a good ear. That’s what I was doing with Elmo’s music, and I was trying to impress him without seeming too school girlish.”

Sadly, Elmo died from heart failure when he was 43 and Bertha was 31. They had three children, and their daughter, Monica, became a singer.

“Being able to talk the same language was wonderful,” says Hope about her marriage. “I was in awe of Elmo. For a long time, I didn’t let him hear me play. I would practice when he wasn’t home. Eventually, we did play together and did an LP. We sometimes went to practice together, but I was always nervous and a wreck.”

She says Bud Powell’s style was also a big influence on her in the beginning, as well as Duke Ellington, and later, Mary Lou Williams. Hope says there have always been women musicians, as long as she can remember, because of the “church influence.”

“Blues and church music have very similar elements,” says Hope, explaining it was most common for women to play the piano. “When I was growing up, I met one woman who played the saxophone in LA…I wanted to play the trumpet, but my mom said it was too masculine.”

So she ended up dabbling with the violin, cello and clarinet, but sticking to the piano, because she says those instruments were acceptable at the time for girls. She sometimes regrets not pursuing the trumpet, however.

“I wasn’t aggressive enough to pursue another instrument,” says Hope. “I wasn’t brave enough to persist.”

She says she was around 12 or 13, however, when she was certain she wanted to be a musician for her life’s career.

“I come from a musical family. I took lessons starting at 3, and in a great public school in Los Angeles, I was exposed to instruments at a very early age,” says Hope. “The first time I realized it was what I wanted to do was when my father asked to help vocalize him. He hired me at age 12. That was my first salary – $7 for the concert. I hardly make that much now.” (laughing)

She says one of her all-time favorite accomplishments in her career was putting the band Jazzberry Jam! together in the late 1970’s. The four-woman band has played at New York City’s Gracie Mansion, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Renaissance Jazz Festival in Indianapolis, and was featured in a 1999 award-winning documentary, “Les Femmes du Jazz.”

“[Forming the band] helped us turn the corner of being a band that worked occasionally to a band that played a lot,” says Hope. “We performed at The West End for eight weeks straight. The people that came to support was mostly musician’s wives, and we still perform today. “

Bertha playing at Minton’s in Jan. 2015 (Photo/Kristina Puga)

Hope is currently in residency at NYC jazz club, Minton’s, where she plays with the Minton Players every other weekend.

If she could tell her younger self one piece of advice about life, with the wisdom she has now, what would it be?

“Stay in school, and stay open. Stay focused. Listen more than you talk. Take in a wide amount of musical experiences, and stay true to yourself. Find people that do the best of what it is you want to do, and try to learn from their experiences.”

January 28, 2015