Fundraiser Supports Two Charities Linked By Music and the Need to Help and Heal

The Main Squeeze Headline City Winery Event March 27 for Rock and Wrap It Up! and Music Never Stops: The Tyler Seaman Foundation.

If you ever wondered what happened to all that leftover food
after a concert or ballgame, Syd Mandelbaum is way ahead of you.


An ardent music fan, Mandelbaum saw all the food being thrown out at the end of concerts and knew there had to be a better place for the leftovers than the trash. That led Mandelbaum to found in 1991 Rock and Wrap It Up!, a nonprofit that collects unused food and toiletries from 160 bands, 75 sports teams (including the entire NHL), hotels, hospitals and schools and distributes it to agencies fighting hunger and poverty.  The organization was selected as the lead food recovery agency for Super Bowl LXVIII hosted by New York and New Jersey.


“Donated food allows agencies to use the money they’d have otherwise spent on food for other services, such as job training, social workers, tutors and mental health counselors,” Mandelbaum said. “If you take hunger out of the equation you can better attack the root causes of poverty.”


Mandelbaum spoke as Rock and Wrap It Up! readies for a fundraiser March 27 at City Winery in New York featuring the Chicago-based jam band The Main Squeeze.


The event is called Band Together, as a portion of the proceeds will go to a new charity, Music Never Stops: The Tyler Seaman Foundation.


That organization seeks to provide music therapy programs for teenagers facing serious illnesses, beginning with Tyler’s Room at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City.  Funds raised will purchase instruments, recording equipment, software, streaming accounts and concert tickets.  Tyler was diagnosed with a rare form of spinal cancer when he was a high school freshman. Tyler made music a focal point of his life--the Allman Brothers Band was his favorite group—even in the face of dozens of surgical procedures, chemotherapy and radiation. He died in 2010.


“Between playing the bass and drums, going to concerts and making mix tapes, so much of Tyler’s life revolved around music,” said his brother, Marley Jay. “He lived for events like this and he’d love every minute of it.”


Tyler also had a connection to The Main Squeeze. Two of the band’s members knew Tyler well from Camp Baco, a private summer camp in the Adirondacks.


Rock and Wrap It! Up will use Band Together to honor Dori and Michael Fishbin, who have worked with the organization for many years, with the 2014 Lena and Joseph Mandelbaum Humanitarian Award, named after Syd Mandelbaum’s parents who were Holocaust survivors.


The Fishbins, whose sons also attend Camp Baco, have been instrumental in helping the organization expand its reach to hotel chains like Marriott and Hyatt, professional sports teams and schools.


“The idea behind Rock and Wrap It Up is so simple on its face, yet all this food was going to waste. Syd changed all that,” said Michael Fishbin, the leader of Ernst & Young’s global hospitality practice.



Besides the concert, Band Together will also feature a dinner, silent and live auctions
and an open bar. For more information and to buy tickets, go to www.rockandwrapitup.org