For his 29th birthday this past March, saxophonist Jeremy Danneman opted out of the traditional party and decided to hold a parade throughout New York City. “It just sounded like a more interesting thing to do,” Danneman, who grew up in Newark and now lives in Brooklyn, says. “I realized I was asking a lot of my friends to join me for an all-day birthday parade, so I sent out the route and the approximate times I’d be reaching certain landmarks.” Danneman paraded from his apartment in Brooklyn to Queens, then down to Manhattan, where he gave a “Unite the Nations” concert in front of the United Nations. “I felt good about reaching all different kinds of audiences with my music, instead of the demographics that regularly go to clubs in the city,” he says. “It also fed back into the music positively, when the safety net of the familiar audience was pulled from under me.”

A month later, Danneman was reading about the 15th anniversary of a genocide-free Rwanda. (In 1994, nearly 1 million Rwandans were killed in just a few months as part of an ethnic-cleansing war.) “I’d been following the developments in Rwanda because I have an interest in human rights, and because my grandparents were severely affected by what happened in Nazi Europe,” Danneman says. “Rwanda is really mesmerizing, if you read about it. People are now living in perfect harmony in the same neighborhoods as the people who 15 years ago killed their families. Peace is happening in one of the most unlikely places, and that’s one of the best reasons for a parade.”

So a parade it would be. Danneman started raising funds through an organization he set up, Parade of One Inc. (he’s currently working to obtain nonprofit status), and decided to go to Rwanda to perform one-man saxophone concerts for the people there. He spent four weeks there starting in early August, playing and collaborating with local musicians on the streets of Kigali, Butare, and Gisenyi (pictured above), visiting the Murambi Genocide Memorial, giving sax demonstrations at the Muhima Primary School and the Gisimba Orphanage, and working with the Rwa Makondera Children’s Dance Group at the Ivuka Arts Center.

Now back in Brooklyn, Danneman is looking to further the mission of Parade of One by, in his words, “harnessing the potential of woodwind energy”—using saxes and clarinets to produce wind—and making trips to other countries such as Vietnam.