Although David and his wife Lora Lee were at home and escaped safely, they lost nearly everything belonging to them and their three children -- Alana, Adira and Adam, including clothes, personal ossessions, furniture and household appliances. Luckily, David's studio did not burn so his valuable collection of instruments, music scores and equipment were saved along with Lora Lee's original play manuscripts. The remains of the house has been gutted.

The Amram home was not insured and the family now has to re-build from scratch. For more than 45 years, David Amram has volunteered his time and talents to help others and their causes, performing at more than 1000 benefit concerts around the world. Now he is the one in need and many of his close friends and professional associates are stepping forward to do what they can to help him and his family.

Performing at the January 8th benefit concert will be such jazz legends as multi-Grammy Award winning flugelhorn player and composer Chuck Mangione, vocalist Jon Hendricks, drummers Max Roach and T.S. Monk, trumpet and flugelhorn virtuoso Clark Terry, pianist Barry Harris and trombonist Al Grey. Actors Keir Dullea and his wife Mia Dillon will perform dramatic readings from the writings of Jack Kerouac (with whom David Amram did the first jazz-poetry readings in New York in the 1950's), Langston Hughes and Sonia Sanchez.

Also performing will be trumpeter Mark Morganelli and his Jazz Forum All Stars, TV personality Bill Boggs, and the David Amram Jazz Quartet, featuring Jerry Dodgion on saxophone, Victor Venegas on bass, Johnny Almendra on percussion and David Amram on piano, French horn, flutes and a variety of other instruments. All performers have waived their ususal fees to appear at this benefit concert.

The benefit concert is being produced by Jazz Forum Arts in Tarrytown. Tickets for "AMRAM JAM" at the Tarrytown Music Hall, 13 Main Street, are $25 each and may be Purchaseed seven days a week from 11:30 AM to 8:30 PM at VideoPhile, River Plaza Shopping Center, Tarrytown. Tickets may also be bought at all Ticketmaster outlets, or by calling Jazz Forum Arts at 914-631-1000 or by ordering online. All profits will be donated to the Lora Lee and David Amram Re-Building Fund.

Those who cannot attend the benefit concert but wish to donate to the Re-Building Fund may send their checks, made payable to "Lora Lee and David Amram," to: Toshi Seeger, Box 431, Beacon, NY 12508. Please write the word "gift" on the bottom line of the check.

During his illustrious careerm David Amram has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber works, written two operas, and early in his career wrote many scores for theatre and films, including "Splendor in the Grass" and the classic "The Manchurian Candidate." He plays French horn, piano, guitar, numerous flutes and whistles, percussion and a variety of folkloric instruments from 25 countries. He has conducted and performed as a soloist with symphony orchestras around the world, participated in major international music festivals, and traveled from Brazil to Cuba and from Kenya to Egypt.

Since being appointed first composer-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic in 1966-67 by maestro Leonard Bernstein, he has become one of the most acclaimed composers of his generation, listed by BMI as one of the Twenty Most Performed Composers of Concert Music in the United States since 1974.

For the past 27 years, David Amram has served as Music Director of young people's, family and free summer concert programs for the Brooklyn Philharmonic. As conductor, narrator, and soloist on instruments from all over the globe, he combines jazz, Latin American, Middle Eastern, Native American and folk musics of the world in conjunction with the European classics.