The cocktail party denizens were still chattering when Martiza Grillo stood up next to a piano and began singing.
The 14-year-old Orinda girl was at a donor party in Contra Costa County last year for the popular event Notes & Words, a rollicking show in which best-selling authors read their mostly funny works in between music sets at Oakland’s Fox Theater.
The show is a benefit for Children’s Hospital Oakland, where doctors saved Martiza’s life at age three after she contracted salmonella from her family’s pet turtle and nearly wasted away. She would share the limelight with CAKE at the Notes & Words show, which was a sellout, but she was the star attraction at the intimate preview party inside this lovely home near the Diablo Country Club.
The crowd turned almost in unison and stared at Martiza in stunned silence as her strong, melodic voice filled the room, rising and softening as she sang Bridge over Troubled Water, by Simon and Garfunkle. The guests erupted in cheers as she finished, some of them moved to tears.
“It was a powerful, emotional moment for me and everybody else in the room, not just because Martiza has a beautiful voice, but because she, in many ways, is the personification of what we are trying to do for Children’s Hospital,” said Kelly Corrigan, a New York Times best selling author and the organizer of Notes & Words. “She, like thousands of other children who have been treated at the hospital, got a second chance in life. That night, we could see — we could feel in our souls — what she had done with that opportunity.”
Corrigan has seen what a good children’s hospital can do first hand after doctors there successfully diagnosed and treated one of her daughters for meningitis. “As a parent, once you walk those halls at Oakland Children’s, you see things a little differently.”
Corrigan is hard at work preparing for the fourth annual Notes & Words event on May 18, when an all-star lineup of writers and musicians will take the Fox stage. Among them will be New York Times best selling science writer and East Bay resident Mary Roach, who will read from her books, “Stiff,” “Bonk” and “Packing for Mars.” Roach’s newest book, “Gulp,” will be hitting bookstores this month.
Also on stage will be America’s bard, Billy Collins. He was U.S. Poet Laureate under President Bill Clinton and was awarded the Mark Twain Award for humor. Television actress and debut novelist Lauren Graham, will entertain the audience with her witty, amusing yarns about trying to make it as an actress. Her book, “Someday, Someday Maybe,” is currently on the bookshelves.
The sterling musical lineup this year will include Philly hip hop band G. Love & Special Sauce. Good Night, Texas will bring its folksy Americana tunes to the stage, and the national champion high school a cappella group from Oakland School of the Arts, Vocal Rush, will serenade the 1,800 revelers expected to attend the event.
Corrigan will be the master of ceremonies and read excerpts from her two bestselling books, as she has in previous years when she also convinced “Moneyball” writer Michael Lewis, Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon and essayist Anne Lamott to perform their works on stage.
“Think of Notes & Words as City Arts and Lectures crossed with The Bridge School Benefit — at the best venue in the Bay Area,” Corrigan said about the event, which raises about $500,000 every year for Children’s Hospital.
The not-for-profit hospital, which sees more children in its emergency room than all other Bay Area pediatric institutions combined, provides high quality care to anyone who needs it regardless of a family’s ability to pay. The proceeds from Notes & Words will be used to cover unreimbursed care and to pay for specialized services such as in-house schooling, portable laptops and music therapy.
Tickets for Notes & Words can be purchased at www.notesandwords.org.