Monnette Sudler-Honesty

Monnette Sudler-Honesty was invited to collaborate with musicians from Cuba, Mexico, and South Africa to play bass guitar as part of a project called The Peace Train: Transcending Barriers. The Peace Train is an all-woman music and dance program that promotes cultural exchange, mutual respect, constructive engagement and empowerment. Singers from Northern, Central, and Southern California will meet with singers from across the border in Mexico. Participants will come together at the border on July 21 to link arms and sing as they parade from the border to Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT). Monnette will travel to the West Coast to rehearse and perform with the other musicians as part of a culminating unity concert at CECUT.

Monnette will document musicians who participate in the Monnette Sudler’s Philadelphia Guitar Summit on film. Participants will be asked to speak about their musical styles, techniques, and explore how culture influences their music. Inspired by her own experience as a young girl who loved guitar, she will focus a large portion of the film on women musicians. Monnette hopes this film will inspire more women to play music and create more opportunities for those who already perform. The film will be used as an educational component during workshops in colleges and schools, and will be submitted for public broadcasting. 

The Monnette Sudler Philadelphia Guitar Summit, scheduled for January 2015, will feature four workshops and a final concert at Montgomery County Community College. Free workshops, hosted by Montgomery Community College, the Seniors Center in the Park, and the Clef Club of Jazz and Performing Arts, will address topics such as the culture of African, Jazz, and Blues music and the emergence of young women within the Philadelphia music scene. The projects seeks to raise consciousness, create space for expression in and for different communities, challenge racism, sexism, and ageism through diversity, and engage participants in a reciprocal process where learning and teaching occur simultaneously.

Monnette is a jazz guitarist, composer, producer and vocalist. She has maintained a continued presence as a bandleader, performer, and recording artist in Philadelphia and internationally. Monnette has produced her own CDs and recordings for educational, emotional, spiritual and moral development. Her art-for-social change is reflected in her music, both lyrically and stylistically, and expressed in compositions, performances, collaborations, and through the instruction of youth and seniors.  Monnette’s music targets issues of prominence for young people on social and emotional levels—such as the need for a father; running away from love that goes awry; surviving the social stigmas of living among poverty, drugs, murder, and incest; African American struggles and triumphs; as well as women’s issues. More importantly, Monnette gives positive reinforcement and encouragement throughout her students’ creative and learning process. Her writing also reflects what she hears from young people, so that they understand that their feelings, ideas, and thoughts matter. Monnette developed the program Mend the Mind, Free the Soul in order to incorporate music and music education into the C.A.R.E (Children Achieving through Re-education) model for therapeutic classrooms. She was also one of four composers chosen by the Philadelphia Opera Company to compose music based on poems written by students at Art Sanctuary with final performances by students, opera singers, and a string quartet.  This collaborative project highlighted the creative link between hip-hop literature and classical vocal music. Monnette is also the founder/producer of the Philadelphia Guitar Summit going into it's 4th year. The 2012 workshops so far will be String and Roots Folklore and Women Behind the Guitar.