UPDATE AUGUST 2024
To anyone who still wanders to view this page: Please be sure to read everything! The site navigation is misleading, the bulk of people's memorial comments are under the Visit the Galleries menu then click Thoughts.
News: I'm starting to publish videos from the memorial.
Here's the first one - it's Karl's song Back to the Playground, the first song on the playlist from the Wake Up Call Band that evening in April: https://youtu.be/rAOj-aO4-rs
It's "unlisted" so you won't find it on Karl's page, will maybe make it public soon, it just feels weird to have a new post show up on his account now that he's gone ya know?
Still missing Karl but doing OK. Thank you to everyone who keeps checking in on me, I appreciate you so much.
~Lisa
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previous posts
WE DID IT!
KARL HAS BEEN CELEBRATED - APRIL 28TH
And the gratitude and ripples of transformation will continue onwards.
So many people to thank, this initial list is to say THANK YOU TO FORTUNA, MATT, YI-CHEN AND ALEX AT SHAPESHIFTER LABS! Could NOT have done this without your generosity, technical abilities, and that beautiful space! Thank you to STEPHANIE for being virtual host in the Zoom space! Thank you to NOWSHIN at JALSA GRILL for the fabulous Indian food, and NADIA for the incredible baked goods - the cheesecake! the nettle cupcakes! the fruit pie!!! Thank you to ANNELIESE for coordinating all of that! Thank you to EMILY who shepherded the art projects. Thank you of course to the Wake Up Call Band, 2024 edition, for the most important part of all, the gift of Karl's music! Original members JIM WHITNEY, GARY WANG, SCOTT NEUMANN, BENNETT PASTER, and especially ARUN LUTHRA who put it all together including getting Karl's original sheet music and figuring out the notes to do the arranging make it authentic to Karl's vision, plus new members DAVE PIETRO, RYAN KEBERLE, and GREGG FINE, all of you were amazing!!
Thank you also to the anonymous sender of this fabulous presentation of flowers - wow! They were gorgeous!
Thank you so, so, so much to those who donated to the GoFundme - you helped make all of this possible!
And thank you to every single one of you who attended, participated, showed up, connected, and celebrated Karl.
I'm sure I've missed many, I apologize if I have overlooked you...
Pictures and any further thoughts or reflections are absolutely welcome, please continue to post if you wish, this site will stick around for awhile at least!
Want to participate in making Karl's legacy? Consider either donating to any of the organizations below or you are invited to participate directly in supporting the costs of the memorial and expenses from clearing out Karl's apartment at this GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/karl-wenninger-is-cool
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This site is a tribute to Karl, who passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on March 27th. Karl was a musician, a sound engineer, and Rockit's best friend. His passing has left a huge hole in so many hearts.
Karl was involved in an incredibly array of different community circles, projects, initiatives, it's utterly amazing to hear from everyone who knew him. Scroll to the bottom to see some links to Karl's work and please share your experiences with him openly here, let's celebrate this wonderful human and each other.
So far I know about these things that Karl was involved in:
- NYCMesh - running cables up buildings to put in internet for neighborhoods in need
- Nurture BK community compost - unfortunately had to close down recently
- Caton Migration Garden - Karl was instrumental in establishing the garden in 2021 and helping to maintain it, as needed, since then
- Q Gardens - Since January 2024, Karl volunteered weekly to support onsite compost processing through midweek pile turning, a key role
- Sean Casey Animal Rescue - taking dogs for walks to keep them happy and healthy
- The Village House Pantry and Flatbush Friendly Fridge - working as point person for provisions every Thursday with their food distribution at the corner of Parkside and Rogers Aves.
- Jalsa Indian/Pakistani restaurant which does food distribution, Karl was involved in toy drives and other community projects
- Tutoring for elementary schoolkids - such as Gracie a 4th grader who he was helping with reading and math in 2021
- NEW! I just found out he had signed up to do volunteer tax prep help for low income folks through NY Cares this year, which I have learned he had done in prior years too (it sucks to see a "No Show" email come in from this organization, Karl would never have no-showed!!!)
So many things. If I missed the community that you knew Karl through, please do share.
Karl had also recently gotten involved with the Brooklyn Public Library teaching a bunch of classes on sound engineering and GarageBand.
Karl also did audio engineering for a guy named Drew at this cool podcast called Sleep with Me which he enjoyed so much, and what was particularly cool is that Karl got paid to use his talents. After Touro shut down, that wasn't as available to him, though he gave away his time doing sound engineering for free to so many artists along the way.
He was well loved by coworkers in his event production job at Worldstage and other firms, many of his colleagues have reached out and I hope they will be able to attend the gathering that is in the works. Karl was on site at Bloomberg Philanthropy when it happened.
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Thank you to all who helped make connections! We have made contact with Beth, Roland, Arun, Joel, Jim, Ramsey,Drew, Erik, Rich, Mike, and Anitza, and also now Elke, Chris, and Chela - thank you to everyone who have helped make that happen. We still need to connect with Mark in Bay Ridge, and Allison. Please leave a message on this page if you know them or can help, and again thank you to all who are sharing this sad news.
*** LINKS TO KARL'S STUFF ***
This site doesn't seem to allow hyperlinks in posts (grrr!) so please let me know about Karl's work through the contact form and I will post it here. Karl was involved in so many projects, we will be assembling them centrally somehow.
- Karl was in Erik Moskowitz's 2005 film A Bit of Dirt
- Karl did sound engineering on the album At Karl's by band Progress - check it out on Bandcamp (yes they basically named the album after him)
- Karl Wenninger SoundCloud page here - looks like all audio engineering projects
- Karl Wenninger YouTube - tutorials on sound engineering
- NEW 5/13/24 (Thanks Beth!) Play Tic Tac Toe against Einstein or the orange guy! Karl taught himself programming and this appears to be one of his projects
We will be posting his music eventually too.
Help grow Karl's Tribute by adding messages or memories you'd like to share.