Documentary Fund Raising: An Original Take by Julie Carmen and the Doc ’Lico Jiménez the Ebony Liszt’
When literally a hundred of my friends’ homes burned during the Los Angeles fires, launching a GoFundMe campaign for ’Lico Jiménez the Ebony Liszt’ felt insensitive”.
This year just past, I rendez-vous’d in Nuremberg with Julie Carmen and traveled with her family archivists and documentary crew to the Bayreuth Opera House to interview the thirteenth generation owner of Hotel Goldener Anker where Julie’s great grandfather, Lico Jiménez, performed for Richard Wagner on his 60th birthday.
Julie is producing a documentary along with director Isidro Betancourt, who got his Masters degree on the subject of Afro Cuban composer José Manuel “Lico” Jiménez Berroa (1851-1917).
But what continues to grab my attention is the momentum for creative financing she is manifesting during a time when she clarifies, “no grants want to touch a project related to Cuba, and more importantly, literally a hundred of my friends’ homes burned during the Los Angeles fires so launching a GoFundMe campaign for Lico Jiménez the Ebony Liszt feels insensitive”.
Therefore, on the anniversary of Lico’s 174th birthday, December 7th, 2025, Julie produced a slumber party aboard the R.M.S. Queen Mary with a formal dinner, historic ship tour, and she launched the Lico Jiménez inaugural Music Competition that earned a proclamation from the Mayor of Long Beach.
Inside the Royal Salon, the renovated mens’ smoking lounge where Winston Churchill famously spent much of the second world war, Julie staged a Veronique Manga Bell fashion show accompanied by Lico’s Valse Caprice which was composed during the beginning of the Belle Epoque when Lico, along with his father and half brother, were the house musicians at Chateau Chenonceau in Tours, France. Julie chuckles, “How else can an indie doc visually explore the swirling libertine age but to create a cross generational mashup catapulting Lico’s Valse Caprice into modernity while showcasing dresses designed by one of his descendants?”
Sydney: But how did this help with your doc financing?
Julie: The slumber party on the R.M.S. Queen Mary created enough buzz for our weekend guests to donate towards filming the concert and fashion show with four cameras and studio quality microphones.
The Queen Mary made sense because Lico crossed the Atlantic three times from Trinidad, Cuba to Hamburg Germany in 1867, from Tours, France to Havana, Cuba in 1879 and from Cienfuegos, Cuba, where he left a son behind, to Hamburg in 1890, all the while bringing his musical influence back and forth across the Atlantic.
Lico married in Hamburg, had three more children. When he died in 1917 he had performed in 200 concerts throughout Europe and was the co-director of the Hamburg Conservatory of Music.
It’s through interviews with 23 living descendants that we tell Lico’s remarkable odyssey. We filmed his descendants in historically significant venues in six countries and sixteen cities but, without an angel, we’ve been financing the shoot with Lico Jiménez soirees and concerts. The heart and soul of the impact campaign are “Afro Cuban German Lieder Incubators, Residencies and Salons” that are germinating spontaneously wherever musicians master and perform Lico’s compositions, which are extremely challenging. The audience for the documentary is building organically.
Sydney: It seems Lico’s music is generating a life of its own. How did that happen?
Julie: I feel like Johnny Appleseed. Wherever we scatter seeds, trees bear fruit.
For the anniversary of his 173rd birthday, thirty four people traveled to Cuba through the “support for the Cuban people” visa program. In Cienfuegos dancers performed to Lico’s art songs inside the Teatro Terry, which he inaugurated in 1890. The top soprano of Cuba, Johana Simon, sang Lico’s eight song cycle inside the Casa de las tejas verdes, a Queen Anne style museum in Havana.
The travel company Project Por Amor donates profits from travel adventures to our production budget. Luminario Ballet, a 501-c-3 nonprofit dance company registered in the State of California, receives tax deductible donations for our film and we offer thank you incentives.
But fascination with the “missing link in Cuban music” alone has attracted significant involvement from Grammy winner Chucho Valdez, who composed Suite Afro Cubana a Lico Jimenez by Chucho Valdez.
Lico Jimenez was an outstanding classical composer who influenced the top classical and jazz composers of the early 20th century including Cervantes and Lecuona. Lico Jimenez studied with Brahms, beat Debussy in Paris competitions, and worked with Franz Liszt for many years. Jimenez ultimately left Cuba permanently due to racial discrimination and violence and became Music Director of the Hamburg Conservatory and Orchestra in Germany.
Kennedy Center honoree, Tania Leon, let us interview her inside Carnegie Hall’s rehearsal salon. Rosa Marquetti sat down this month with Isidro Betancourt for an interview in Madrid.
Composer Maria Newman, whose father Alfred Newman won nine Oscars and headed 20th Century Fox Music, has been helping us launch Lico’s music since the beginning of our project. For the past year her Malibu Friends of Music included her instrumental arrangements of Lico’s compositions at concerts inside their historic architectural home. Cuban violinist Alejandro Junco and pianist Wendy Prober performed Lico’s Petite Legende inside the Queen Mary King’s View Salon on his 174th birthday.
People can download the album HOMMAGE on all music platforms to hear part of our soundtrack recorded in Spain with Teresa Novoa (soprano), Jessica Sanchez (piano) and Gabriel Urgell Reyes (piano).
Sydney: It seems that producing this passion project has eclipsed your other work yet Kino Lorber recently restored your acting debut in Night of the Juggler, now a 4K UHD BluRay. And last year we talked about your directing a short film about women in prison for retaliating against their abusers (read here about that).
Julie: All of a sudden, life feels short. Clarifying our purpose keeps us vital.