Mon Petit Mojave

What does it mean if your poster ends up at a thrift store for $9 - should we be offended or honored?

We’re popping up for the summer!

Thanks to the awesome High Notes benefit we held in April, we were able to raise funds for the Mon Petit Mojave Foundation and bring you a couple of shows in July.

Friday July 5th: Giselle Woo and the Night Owls: With a genre-bending fusion of cumbia, rock ’n’ roll, ska, and folk rhythms, and bilingual lyrics that point to frontwoman Giselle Woo’s Mexican-American roots, this Coachella Valley–born band represents what modern, desert-made music is all about. Hang on tight, because this set list promises to take you on a serious sonic trip.

Saturday July 6th: Join us for some country-ish Americana (*this is not a country band*) with John Stanely King’s Cowboy Songs. John vocalizes in the folk-country tradition, simple in form and harmony, with some romantic ballads accompanied by his acoustic guitar and band. This band produces a sound that is authentic to the genre and just plain fun to listen to. Great covers of country’s legends like Cash, Denver, and Daniels, to name a few, have audiences up on their feet singing and dancing along.

We want to thank everyone in our community who donated to the Mon Petit Mojave Foundation, and a special thanks to our presenting sponsor, Mancini Shenk LLP for their generous support of the arts.

Details: Shows are free, but you must RSVP in advance.
Times: Shows start at 7:30pm, doors open at 6:30pm, and end by 9pm
Location: 57050 Sun Mesa Drive Yucca Valley CA 92284
Check out our FAQs on our website for more information

RSVP at our link in bio!

Happy Mother’s Day to all our mothers and mother figures:

The ones on stage
The ones with boots on the ground
The ones who bring their kids to experience MPM
The ones who bring the crew snacks and a lot of love and support

You are all so very loved and appreciated 💕

You always get two shows at MPM, the one on stage and the one nature provides with the colorful sunsets and glittering stars. ✨

Happy Earth Day…we feel very lucky to call this place home. 🌎

Photo:

From the archives: Why did Mon Petit Mojave become a thing?

As this front page newspaper article highlights, we found a way to safely bring people together to fill an ‘entertainment void’ caused by the Covid Pandemic.

An outdoor, drive in concert meant that people could be parked “6 feet apart” and stay in the immediate vicinity of their cars, for safety.

On our end, we needed to find a safe way to get on stage, to create, because that’s what artists must do. MPM was not just born out of a need for the community, but for the artists themselves.

As time passed and life returned to whatever we consider normal, music and art popped back up in the usual spaces: indoor venues, theaters, bars, restaurants, festivals.

But the magic of MPM seemed to transcend the pandemic, and the community kept supporting and asking for more shows. After the spark was ignited, it was hard to stop.

We soon realized that it’s not just the uniqueness of Mon Petit Mojave that transcended time, but it’s the way this uniquenesses served all members of our community.

That’s why we focused on the accessibility aspect of our shows: economic accessibility by maintaining the shows free, physical accessibility by accommodating all kinds of individuals with specific/special needs, and finally, providing a welcoming environment so that all are able to enjoy live music.

Tomorrow’s show, High Notes, is our first ever benefit to fundraise for the Mon Petit Mojave Foundation, which is the non-profit that MPM evolved into. Our hope is to fundraise to continue to bring more shows to our community, featuring culturally-rich world music and music from our own desert, all while providing a welcoming place for our community to gather.

Tickets are still available, hope to see you there!

- Jacqueline, Mon Petit Mojave Foundation President

It takes between 50-60 years for a Joshua Tree to mature, growing at a rate of 3” for the first 5-10 years, and then 1.5” thereafter.

Now, we’re not saying it will take Mon Petit Mojave 50 years to ‘mature’ or to be settled into a place of smooth operations (at least we hope not). But we are saying that things are growing very, very slowly.

But growth is growth! And in between navigating permits and fundraising, we are able to host a handful of shows every year to keep our dream alive.

To kick off this year, our first show is a Spring Benefit, to fundraise for the Mon Petit Mojave Foundation. Tickets are still available, so if you are looking for a tangible way to support the MPM Foundation, grab a ticket below. I hope to see you there!

- Jacqueline H.
MPM Foundation President

Read more in our latest newsletter 😎

Kids need live music too!

Mon Petit Mojave is a very kid-friendly space, as we believe it’s never too early to expose children to a variety of live music.

It is part of our foundation’s mission to make musical experiences more accessible to our community, and that includes families with children.

Whether Jazz or Blues, listening to live music helps with their brain’s development; being at a concert helps with their socialization skills, and being outdoors in nature is always a great thing for people of all ages.

MPM is one of the few spaces where kids have the freedom to be themselves and experience a concert at whatever level they are at.

So bring your kids, your nieces and nephews, your 3rd grade classroom 😄

From the archives:

We knew things were serious when we started building a small platform so that our guests could better see the shows.

On the day we debuted this new stage, Palm Springs Life magazine came by to snap pictures of the only covid-friendly concerts happening during that time.

A picture featuring that rad Westfalia van you see here eventually made the cover of the magazine.

Join us for our inaugural benefit concert!

In hopes of producing a series of shows this year, and to honor our official status as a non-profit organization, we invite you to join us for our first annual Spring Benefit at the Mon Petit Mojave ranch in Yucca Valley!

Falling on 4/20/2024 this year, the evening is cheekily named “High Notes”.

Joining us on stage are the musical stylings of , with on the violin, on the Banjo, Damien Lester on Bass, and on the clarinet.

In addition, we’ll enjoy short storytelling from special guests on why the Mon Petit Mojave Foundation is a much-needed, special place for art and culture in our desert communities.

Being a fundraiser, this is a ticketed event. There will also be opportunities at the event to make a contribution to the foundation, so that we may continue to produce free, culturally-rich, accessible shows for our community.

Bring your own picnic, or pre-order gourmet picnic boxes from . Picnic boxes are suitable for one person, and are available in charcuterie or Mezze (Vegetarian) options.

Tickets: https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/monpetitmojave/high-notes-a-concert-benefitting-the-mon-petit-mojave-foundation

Artwork:

Back when Mon Petit Mojave first started, this was our sign at the entrance. A kid’s chalkboard hung over a clothes drying rack. 😂

The sign was there so that you would wait as indicated, while we ran around parking people that had just checked in.

As we grew, we got more support so someone could stay at the check-in at all times.

We still don’t have a proper sign by the way, but it’s on our wishlist ✨

Whatever love looks like for you, we wish you all that and more ♥️

Happy Valentine’s Day

Music may be our main jam, but we built a second stage specifically for visual art 🎨

Our artist-in-residence, , holds it down with his psychedelic art, often inviting new artists to paint with him, and always down to explain his work/process to guests. 💜

📸:

Gifts are our love language…🍯

Mon Petit Mojave shows have always been free, and it takes a lot of work from our team and board to fundraise for production and artistic costs.

So when our guests show up with jars of honey, bottles of wine, boxes of donuts, bags of dog treats, or even handwritten notes, know that we cherish and appreciate every single gesture of love and support. ♥️

Which color is your favorite? 🌈

We're headed back to our little living room, aka the Mon Petit Salon at the Palm Springs Cultural Center next week starting with back-to-back sold-out shows...thank you all for your support!

Please get your tickets in early for February as we expect the sold-out trend to continue! We've got more French Songs coming up, Love Songs on the 12th with Lia Booth, and more.

For tickets, please check out the comments in this post or look up "Mon Petit Salon Evenbrite"

Goals for 2024:

1. See more sunsets like this
2. Bring more music to the stage
3. Grow our community that appreciates live music, nature, and art
4. Share the MPM experience with people who may have never heard of MPM or don’t normally get to experience these unique moments
5. Raise a lot of funding 🤪

These goals are totally achievable, right?!

Photo:

It’s been a year of mindful growth.

Typically, organizations send out End of Year reports that highlight accomplishments of the year with big numbers.

We don’t have very many big numbers this year but we have do have some big milestones, including:

•We hosted 5 drive-in shows at Mon Petit Mojave, including a new type of show, theatre.

•We held 2 pop-up concerts, one at Morongo Valley Elementary, and the other at the High Desert Continuing Care Center, as part of our mission to create more accessible musical experiences for our community.

•We successfully fundraised over $5,000 to cover the costs of the legal and administrative fees associated with becoming a 501©3 non-profit organization, and officially became one!

•We held our first board meeting!

So while things might have seemed a bit quieter than usual, behind the scenes we were still moving along, slowly but surely.

For 2024, we want to get back to music as a way to bring the community together, provide experiences otherwise not seen around here, and create an inclusive environment that welcomes all.

Our focus will be on fundraising, in addition to securing a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) from San Bernardino County in order to officially become a venue - more on that soon!

On behalf of the MPM team, we’d like to wish everyone an upcoming year full of health, joy, peace….and lots of music!

If you’d like to make a tax-deductible contribution to the Mon Petit Mojave Foundation before the year-end, there’s still time - click on the link in the comments.

With gratitude,
Jacqueline Levi
President, Mon Petit Mojave Foundation

From our family to yours and your loved ones, we’re wishing you all a happy holidays 😎

Thank you for all your support this year as we scaled back in order to focus on turning into a nonprofit.

We’re excited for the coming year and more!

Joyeux Noël! 🎁

Last Monday was our first sold out show of the season at Mon Petit Salon - we want to thank you all for your continued support of the arts!

And to the for inviting us into their space in order to bring more music to the people

We’ll be on a short break for the holidays and the Palm Springs Film Fest, and our first show back is January 22nd - it’s filling up fast, so please book your tickets in advance!

Neighbors and friends, we’ll be at the Yucca Valley Festival of Lights Parade tomorrow, Saturday December 9th!

We’ll be hauling this bad boy and giving out treats. Come say hi to the MPM team, we miss you!

The Festival of Lights parade is organized by the Yucca Valley Rotary, it starts at 5:30pm and takes place on Sant Fe Trail between Deer Trail and Inca Trail