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Musician. Artist. Educator.
Traveller. Thinker. Creative.
Gino Hannah, founder of Arts for the Culture, is a 33-year-old Baltimore native who was born in Catonsville, MD, into a family of musicians and artists. From birth, he was immersed in a musical world where a vast array of worldly musicians and artists influenced and impacted his development. His musical gift comes from his paternal grandmother, who played piano by ear. She filled the room with jazz standards, show tunes, and hits from the big-band era. All 4 of her children are musicians, and made their way through the Rock music of the 60s and 70s and eventually into Jazz and Bebop music of the era. Gino’s father and uncle are founding members of Rumba Club, a Baltimore/Washington Latin Jazz outfit that was born out of the legendary DC Rumba Scene and bridges many Afro-Caribbean genres with traditional and contemporary Jazz harmony.
This influence of international musicians and artists opened Gino up to a global consciousness of cultures and flavors through the realm of music, rhythm, and harmony. At age 2 and 3, he would lie down on the floor and sleep next to his dad’s bass drum mid-gig, subconsciously receiving the rhythmic influence coming from his father’s percussion.
Gino’s mother is a retired public school art and photography teacher whose passion was providing young people a creative space and equipping them with skills for expression and reverence for art history and traditions. Gino would go into the classroom with her and work on clay and photography projects, mentored by her high-school students. It is from his mother’s lineage that he adopted the passion for teaching and working with youth, both in and outside academic settings.
Gino’s maternal Grandmother embedded in him a universal love for humanity, awareness of spirituality, and connection to Baltimore City. She was raised in an Italian household in Pimlico during WWII. She lost her father at age 5 when his plane tragically collided with another in a rescue mission over the Pacific. The loss of her father, a childhood laced with trauma, and a husband who left her with 3 young children eventually led her to the deep love and healing brought through the teachings of the Christ. Leading with this love, she raised 3 children, acquired many skills and experiences, traveled the world solo, and could connect with people from any race, color, or creed.
Formative experiences came from 3 youth-group service trips that Gino took in high school- two to the Gulf Coast in New Orleans and Mississippi to provide relief from Hurricane Katrina, where over 100 youths went 2 years in a row to help rebuild after the devastation left in the wake of Katrina. After his senior year, he went to Matamoros, Mexico, where the group built a 2 room casita for a family of 15+. This was his first taste of the inequity resulting from globalization. The toxic waste and poverty in the shadow of giant maquiladoras (factories) on the border and the human and environmental suffering that result. These were eye-opening, life-changing experiences that taught him about service, cultural sensitivity, and national/international relationships.
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Childhood
Gino began playing the piano at age 5, moved to saxophone at age 10, and then to the tuba at age 14. He was involved in choirs from age 9-13, where he began developing his singing voice in the context of an ensemble. Gino credits his public school music teachers for his musical lexicon and musicianship from an early age. Andrew Mitroff and Paula Schwartzman at Sudbrook Magnet Middle School and Jim Wharton at Catonsville High School are local legends who impacted countless young lives and developed them as musicians and appreciators of music.
Gino first picked up the guitar around the age of 12, wanting to learn to play the punk, indie, classic rock, reggae, and ska music he was so fond of. He took a few lessons from his uncle Rick and studied under Bruce Feurestein for a couple of years. Feuerstein engaged Gino in learning the music that appealed to him personally, giving him a creative outlet outside of the classical school setting, and influencing his approach to engaging youth in music education.
Once he reached high school, Gino went deeper with the guitar, learning songs by ear, jamming with neighborhood friends, writing songs, and forming bands to play the music that he loved. His bands rehearsed in the basement of the Hannah household and played local shows at the Recher Theater, Fletcher’s in Fell’s Point, local pools, churches, street festivals…, and anywhere else that would have them. It was in high school that he also began playing drums, as there was always a drum kit set up in the Hannah house. He began recording music in studios and on his own through the technology that was becoming more widely available.
University
In 2009, he graduated from high school, and in his search for a higher education, he had one goal—to study abroad in West Africa. He ended up at his parents' alma mater, St. Mary’s College of Maryland; a small, public liberal arts school on the St. Mary’s River in southern Maryland, where he majored in music (Performance and Composition) and minored in educational studies. At the time, St. Mary’s had a program partnership with the University of The Gambia in West Africa, which, along with the in-state tuition being affordable, solidified his choice for university.
In addition to continuing his personal guitar studies, Gino was active in the St. Mary’s Orchestra (under Jeff Silberschlag), Brass quintets, Jazz Band, and he studied privately with David Froom (Composition) Brian Bourne (Tuba and Trombone) and Mallet Percussion. The St. Mary’s music department fit Gino’s needs. It was not conservatory style, even though the highly qualified music department could provide that type of training if desired. Gino took more of a holistic approach to his music degree, where he studied arranging, composing, conducting, ethnomusicology, electronic music, and performance. He participated in the Alba International Music Festival (Italy) on scholarship from St. Mary’s in 2013, where he studied composition and performed with the Romanian Philharmonic.
At St. Mary’s, Gino pursued a wide array of liberal arts subjects in addition to his musical and education studies. Anthropology, sociology, religious studies, economics… his interests were broad, and he had a critical lens for government and society. He filled his mind space with philosophy, religion, indigenous knowledge, history, and music. His desire to see the world and connect with all kinds of people took him to West Africa in 2011, where he designed his own independent study to learn the Kora, a West African harp. He stayed for 6 months and studied at Jali Kunda with the Jobarteh family (mostly Dembo, Paa Bobo, Tata Dinding), a family of Griots who have kept the oral history, built, taught, and played the Kora for hundreds of years, with origins dating back to Sunjata, the great king of the Malian empire. He learned the basics of the Mandinka language and made lifelong friends and family in The Gambia, the smallest country in Africa.
Baltimore
Gino’s involvement in the Baltimore music and art scene began in 2015 when he moved home after graduating with a Master of Arts in Teaching from St. Mary’s College of Maryland. While he worked by day as the music teacher at Harlem Park Elementary/Middle School, his band, Strange Attractor, began an 8-year run at the center of the underground scene, building community and curating events across the city and around the East Coast. In this time period, Gino also played and composed with Dead Pedal, Domino, Cierra Lione, Copper Marmalade, Caleb Stine, Lady Ro, and Mountain Spring.
In the spring of 2019, Strange Attractor and other local creatives spawned CityBeach from out of the Strange Attractor vortex. CityBeach was an underground venue/community in the Annex Building on Oliver Street, where members of the band had been living since 2015. For 2 and a half years, CityBeach was a psychedelic warehouse dreamscape, an oasis for artists, entrepreneurs, and community leaders, and a safe space for expression. It kept the scene fed and thriving at a time when the world was shut down during the C-19 pandemic. Gino was the musical curator and one of the main organizers of the space, in addition to residing there. The collective culminated its tenure with an all-day festival at the Y-Not Lot called “BeachScape” in the summer of 2021, which featured a diverse lineup of beloved Baltimore acts. When the building closed down in November 2021, the CityBeach collective dispersed into their own offshoot projects, and CityBeach remains a legend…until further notice ;)