Hanna Winery and WhyHunger Team Up for Concert to End Hunger

House Concert Series Kicks Off with Music from Jen Chapin

Sonoma, CA (June 2013) — Hanna Winery proudly joins WhyHunger, a leading nonprofit in the fight against hunger and poverty, to kick off the “Homemade Jams: 100 House Concerts to End Hunger” campaign with a performance by Jen Chapin on June 28 from 5-8PM PT.   Supporting WhyHunger's mission to ensure access to healthy, affordable food for all, this special fundraising concert will be held at Hanna Winery during National Hunger Awareness Month and will feature music, locally grown and sourced food, and beautiful wines from Hanna’s Sonoma County vineyards.  All proceeds will benefit WhyHunger.

“Homemade Jams: 100 House Concerts to End Hunger” is a fun and inspiring DIY campaign designed by WhyHunger to get musicians and music fans engaged in the fight against hunger through fundraising house concerts across the country.  These concerts will help WhyHunger raise awareness and money to connect people to nutritious, affordable food and support grassroots solutions that inspire self-reliance and community empowerment.

“There are 50 million Americans who are hungry – including 17 million children,” said Hanna Winery President Christine Hanna. “These are heartbreaking and unacceptable facts. At Hanna, we’ve been fortunate to know the joys of a bountiful table, and felt compelled to help. The more we learned about WhyHunger and its sustainable approach to tackling this issue, the more we knew it was the organization we wanted to team up with.”

Co-founded in 1975 by the late musician Harry Chapin, WhyHunger provides capacity building services, technical support, and access to information and financial resources to community organizations implementing new ideas and developing groundbreaking projects to transform their communities.

“Music has been part of the DNA of our organization since its inception and our Homemade Jams house concert series gives everyone the chance to use the power of music to raise funds and awareness for the fight against hunger in their own backyards, living rooms and communities,” said Bill Ayres, WhyHunger’s executive director and founder. “We couldn’t be more excited to kick off this campaign with two incredible activists who believe that everyone deserves the right to good food, Christine Hanna of Hanna Winery and Jen Chapin.”

WhyHunger’s commitment to sustainability and community is a natural fit for Hanna, a family-owned and operated winery that produces wines in Sonoma County from estate vineyards in the Alexander Valley, Russian River Valley, and on Bismark Mountain.

Food has always been an important part of the Hanna Winery story. In addition to running the winery and raising a family, Christine Hanna is widely known for celebrating the natural bounty of Sonoma County. She is the author of the “The Winemaker Cooks” (Chronicle Books: 2010), which features recipes centered largely on produce from her own home garden in Alexander Valley.

“WhyHunger’s programs, such as the Food Security Learning Center and Grassroots Action Network, are especially vital today,” Hanna said. “There’s a growing recognition that we need to fix a broken system that provides food that isn’t as nutritious as it can be.”

The featured recording artist performing at Hanna Winery, Jen Chapin, similarly shares a life-long commitment to music and activism. As the daughter of WhyHunger’s co-founder Harry Chapin, WhyHunger’s mission and activist spirit are deeply steeped in her songs and into the workshop presentations she offers to colleges and communities. Jen proudly serves on WhyHunger’s board and supports the Artists Against Hunger & Poverty program through her musical talents.

Artist Jen Chapin’s music is urban folk soul — story songs that search for community and shared meaning, powered by the funk and improvisation of the city. She has been featured on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” performed on stage with Bruce Springsteen, and opened for Bruce Hornsby, Smokey Robinson, and the Neville Brothers. A mere month after the release of Jen Chapin’s new album, Reckoning, produced by five-time Grammy Award winner Kevin Killen, she will perform with the Jen Chapin trio at the Homemade Jam concert at Hanna Winery.

Chapin's Reckoning, a new collection of original songs written in Jen's distinctive blend of urban folk/jazz/pop storytelling, reckons with the challenge of balancing creative ambitions with the immediate demands of mothering small children -- combined with a good dose of social commentary.

For tickets and more information, visit whyhunger.org/hanna.