Shelter Music Boston
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  • Home
  • What we do
    • Who We Serve
    • Children's Program
    • Artistic Innovation >
      • 2023 Julie Leven Artist Project: Songs of Life
      • 2022 Julie Leven Artist Project: Voices of Hope
      • Voices From The Land
      • Florence Comes Home
      • Water for My Soul
      • Women Composers Project
    • Concert Experience
    • Impact
    • Concert Calendar & Programs
  • Who we are
    • Our Story
    • Mission, Vision, Values, and Cultural Equity Statement
    • Artists
    • Administrative Staff
    • Board of Directors
    • Internship Program
  • Donate
    • Donate to the Mission of SMB
    • Donate when you shop online
    • In-Kind Donations & Community Partnerships
    • Foundation, Corporate, and Individual Donors
  • Get Involved
    • Events >
      • 2023 Songs of Life Public Concert
      • Past Events
    • Host a House Concert
    • Stay In Touch
    • Volunteer Opportunities
    • Employment/Musician Opportunities
  • Press & Awards
    • Press
    • Awards
    • Social Innovation Forum
  • Video
    • Videos about SMB
    • Performances by SMB
  • Links
    • Citizen Artists Working for Social Change
    • Transformational Power of Music
    • Anti-Racism Resources
  • SMB Blog

Hatsy Thompson’s Legacy — Her Cello Making Music for Those in Need

8/26/2023

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​The timing could not have been better. Shelter Music Boston ensemble leader and cellist, Lizzy Cook, had to return the latest cello she had been borrowing. It’s not uncommon for musicians, especially musicians early in their careers, to play high quality instruments on loan from friends, employers, or luthiers - makers of stringed instruments. Fortunately for Lizzy, who has played four different instruments in the last two years, the gift of Hatsy Thompson’s cello to SMB arrived just in time.
 
In a six degrees of separation kind of way, Hatsy’s beautiful maple and spruce cello, handcrafted by Alan and Sarah Balmforth, came to Shelter Music Boston thanks to volunteer Trisha O’Connell. A retired nonprofit leader, Trisha has been putting her professional expertise to work for SMB by drafting grant applications for a little over a year now. Some years earlier, Trisha lost her best friend Hatsy to brain cancer and, with Hatsy’s siblings Rachel and Charlie, was helping to settle her estate. After learning about Shelter Music Boston from Trisha, they were all taken with the idea of supporting SMB by donating Hatsy’s cello. Hatsy was a creative and empathetic individual, committed to her 30-year Buddhist practice and the pursuit of passions that moved her personally and spiritually. A gifted writer, photographer and therapist, Hatsy also loved music. In 2000, after years of lessons and rented instruments, she commissioned her beloved cello. She typically played only for herself, enjoying the peace and solitude of the music and the practice of playing. 

Hatsy’s family, Trisha, and all of us at SMB are in agreement that using her cello to bring comfort and hope to adults and children in homeless shelters, recovery programs, or other sites is a fitting tribute to Hatsy. Lizzy Cook said, “I am so filled with gratitude to be able to play on such a beautiful instrument. Thank you to Hatsy and her friends and family for this very generous donation. I can’t wait to use this cello to bring joy and healing to audiences in our upcoming performances!”

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Meet the Musician: Lizzy Cook

12/19/2022

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Tell us a little about your background.
I was born in Kingston, NY but grew up in Durham, NC. I was raised in a very big family with 7 children, in a multicultural home- my father was American and my mother is Korean. I started cello at age 12 in the public school system, and later went on to study at the University of North Carolina- School of the Arts for high school.

What’s your first musical memory?
My father was a self-taught amateur musician. He was always banging away at the piano through the night with old honky-tonk tunes, classical oldies, and his favorite Allman Brothers songs. It would drive us all mad, especially my mother. He loved playing the accordion for any guests that were over at the house, and sometimes even brought out his recorder for very special guests. Before he'd start he would always ask "You ever heard this one?" My father had a friend from church named Benny, who loved to sing gospel and oldies tunes with my dad. Benny could tell you what year just about any oldies record was recorded, and he even sang pretty well too.

What else are you involved in outside of your work with SMB?
I work for two after school strings programs in Boston- Neighborhood Strings in Worcester, and musiConnects in Roslindale. Both programs provide access to high quality string education to anyone who wants to learn. I also teach cello at Milton Academy and privately around Boston. I am also a full-time mom to a wonderful 1.5 year old boy.

What's your favorite ice cream flavor?
Pistachio.


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Volunteer Spotlight: John Kearney

12/17/2021

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Who is John Kearney?
My entire career was spent at IBM working in advanced technology and development of computer software. That's where I learned how to find my way around servers, databases, and programming. When I retired, I decided to look for opportunities to put those skills to work, to help some deserving non-profit organizations, as well as to feel like i was doing something useful.


Probably my other major interest is flying. I've had a pilot's license since my 20s and I've owned my own airplane for 20+ years. For a number of years, I flew volunteer missions for the northeast chapter of Angel Flight.

What drew you to the work of Shelter Music Boston?
I connected with SMB in response to a request posted by Julie Levin on VolunteerMatch. She was looking for someone to create a database of SMB performances. I'm pretty particular about the organizations I choose to help, and SMB's commendable work certainly qualified. Julie was a delight to work with because she knew exactly what she wanted and could explain it clearly. Early on, we did discuss my musical preferences, but Julie was diplomatic enough to overlook that.

What is your favorite type of music?
 I'll just say my car radio is set to rock and roll stations. I've been pretty much a Beatles fan since the beginning.

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Donor Spotlight: Ann Arata and Rome Pozgay

10/13/2021

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Who are Ann Arata and Rome Pozgay?
Ann Arata and Rome Pozgay are retired professionals with a passion for listening to, supporting, performing, and casually playing Classical Chamber and Orchestral Music.  They are cofounders of the North shore Chamber Music Society, a group of amateur and professional musicians who gather for casual chamber music and performance of prepared works, and the Camp Cotuit Chamber Music Club which meets annually on Cape Cod for casual chamber music and orchestral music reading.  Both play with the North Shore Philharmonic Orchestra and are supporters of the Department of Music and Dance at Salem State University.  Their other interests include writing, woodworking, ship modelling, reading, and cooking.

Rome retired from a 45-year career as engineer and researcher in the field of microwave technology, advanced electrodynamics and systems engineering for military and commercial radars.  He has been awarded 21 patents as inventor or coinventor.

Rome has been playing violin for 70 years and playing orchestral and chamber music for 63 years.  His first private teacher, the late Henrik Essers, encouraged casual playing with others and the discovery of lesser-known composers of classical music.  In addition to playing chamber music, Rome presents a seven lecture series on Chamber Music through the Salem State University Explorers Lifelong Learning Institute:  the lecture series emphasizes the social nature of chamber music and includes illustrative examples from many lesser-known composers.

Ann's career included fifteen years as a housing professional creating and filling low-income housing in Cambridge.  As Director of Leasing and Occupancy at the Cambridge Housing Authority she worked closely with homeless people and shelter administrators.  She also served as President of Bread and Jams Shelter in Cambridge and helped facilitate the redevelopment of the Lynn Home for Women.  Ann has played cello since the birth of her first-born and enjoys casual chamber music and performances with friends.

What drew you to the work of Shelter Music Boston?
Ann and Rome (aka Annandrome) were introduced to Shelter Music Boston when invited to attend a private fund raiser in Lexington.  They were completely won over by SMB’s commitment to help the less fortunate of our society using music and have been supporters since.

You've been very supportive of SMB's 2021 Artistic Project, Voices From The Land, featuring compositions from Indiginous youth from the Native American Composer Apprentice Program, which is part of the Grand Canyon Music Festival. What did you find impactful about this collaboration?
We were first aware of the NACAP project of GCMF when we heard an SMB performance of Nuclear Crystal, by Xavier Ben.  We were enthralled because the work itself was very interesting and because SMB gave these young people a professional voice – a voice that was very deserving.  We wanted to add the sheet music for the quartet to our library.  Julie Levin was intrigued by the idea of publishing the music and put us in contact with GCMF.  We suggested that the young composers could earn some money by making their compositions available through the GCMF shop.  We contributed to SMB to help start the project.  To date, GCMF has published one volume of six string quartets by NACAP composers.
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As musicians, you understand the power of connection through music. What piece/pieces would you like SMB to share with our audiences in homeless shelters and substance misuse recovery centers?
As to connections through music, we have personally discovered that chamber music such as Adagios by Mozart, Vivaldi and Barber have a profoundly calming effect on a child with extreme autism and produce a clear change in awareness for a wheelchair bound child with cerebral palsy.  We think that music of this sort can soothe the minds and hearts of those who have experienced significant difficulties in life.  More specifically, we recommend the Cavatina from Beethoven’s Op. 130, Barber’s Adagio for Strings from Op. 11, the Adagio from K. 516, the second movement of the Bach D minor double concerto (a nice version is available for two violins and cello), Vaughn Williams’s Lark Ascending (scored for string quartet and string sextet by Martin Gerigk), the second movement of Dvorak’s Op. 11 String Quartet in F Minor, any of the string quartets and Bagatelles by Alan Hovhaness, Gershwin’s Lullaby for String Quartet, Lauren Bernofsky’s Pas de Deux for violin and cello, the second movement of K. 423 (either violin and viola or violin and cello), Joachim Raff’s Cavatina, Puccini’s Cristantemi (S. 65), the slow movements of Vivaldi’s Le quattro stagioni, Offenbach’s Le larmes de Jacquline (originally scored for cello and string orchestra could be performed with a small string ensemble), the second and third movements of Tom Febonio’s Op. 18 string quartet in C Minor, the gentler violin and cello duets by Gliere, the slow movements of the violin and cello duets by Stamitz, the slow movements of the violin and cello duets by Fiorillo, the slow movements of the violin and cello duets by Giuliani, not to mention a few hundred more.
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Meet the Musician: Aline Benoit

7/5/2021

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Tell us a little about your background.
I grew up in western New York,  between Rochester and Buffalo in a rural community. My parents were transplanted New Englanders so every summer we went to New England and went camping. New England was always the dream destination for me as a kid. My brother started playing the clarinet in elementary school. He's four years older and whatever he did I thought was great so I wanted to play the clarinet. That's how I ended up a clarinet player and then I just fell in love with music. I loved making music. I loved the sense of community, of creating something beautiful together. I loved sharing music. I was very fortunate that the Eastman School of Music was in my neighborhood because that's where I ended up doing my undergraduate degree in music.

What’s your first musical memory?

My parents were not musical and I grew up in a rural area so we didn't have access to all the cultural offerings that one has today. My earliest memory and also my very first memory is from when I was a baby, maybe 18 months old. I was very ill and I was sitting up in my crib in the dark and my father was sitting next to my crib playing his banjo very softly. What I remember from that experience is the feeling of being loved and connected and comforted just by the sound of his music. The music really touched me and conveyed so many emotions and I've wondered if that's part of what inspired my musical journey.​

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What drew you to Shelter Music Boston’s work?
I was really drawn to the mission of Shelter Music Boston. It just lines up with my work as a therapeutic musician. For three years now I've worked at Mount Auburn Hospital offering therapeutic music to patients to bring comfort, lower anxiety, and bring respite. The idea of creating a healing environment through music really resonates with the work we do at Shelter Music Boston and I believe Shelter Music Boston and therapeutic music really align well with each other. ​

Tell us about a special SMB concert memory.
I’ve got two that I really want to share that I keep in my clarinet case. After each concert our shelter guests have an opportunity to give us feedback and that really helps us to know how our programs are coming across and also what really resonated and what didn’t. I can say in all honesty I’ve had some of the most meaningful audience exchanges through Shelter Music Boston. Some of the conversations I have had with our shelter guests have been profound and on a level that you would imagine the most sophisticated concert goer articulating. There’s an immediacy and a real visible sense of the impact that your music has on people. It’s so immediate and I don’t think you get that in a concert hall. There are two written survey responses that I keep. This is the first. This was at Dimock and these are their responses:
  • How did you feel before the concert? I wasn’t in the best mood.
  • How did you feel after the concert? I felt overcome with joy and excitement. The music took me to a place where my mind had endless abilities.
  • What did you enjoy most about the concert? How the instruments played so well together. The silence and then the starts were incredible. Come to Dimock more.
Here’s another one that I love:
  • How did you feel before the concert? I felt a little down, sad
  • How did you feel after the concert? A little better. I felt lighter, like a weight had been lifted off of me
  • What did you enjoy most about the concert? That it was live and the music didn’t care if I was rich or poor with a house or not.
I don’t think it gets any better for a performer than that. You don’t have to have a big gig and a lot of money to feel like your music makes a difference.

What else are you involved in outside of your work with SMB?
​For 20 years I played in the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra and I’ve also played in the Rhode Island Philharmonic. I’ve always had a freelance career, both orchestral and chamber music. I teach, both a private studio and at Longy, teaching performance psychology in the mind/body department and also teaching artistry. I work as a Certified Music Practitioner working at Mount Auburn with palliative care. I’ve had a multi-faceted career and I think what I love so much about Shelter Music Boston is it really aligns with the mission of making a difference in the world through music.

What is your favorite performance you’ve ever attended? What made it so special?
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I didn’t grow up in an environment that was steeped in classical music so the first time that I heard most great orchestral pieces was usually when I played them. My mother owned two classical music records. One was Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 with Bruno Walter conducting the NY Philharmonic and the other was the New World Symphony by Dvorak. When I went to Eastman my freshman year I heard Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in the Eastman theater performed by the Eastman student orchestra. I had never heard a live Mahler symphony before. It was breathtaking! It just blew me away. It was like hearing an orchestra for the first time. I love Mahler’s melodies and the whole breadth of emotions he conveys in that piece. That first experience of hearing a fine orchestra was so profoundly thrilling and magical.


What is your favorite performance you’ve ever given?
In 2003, the last year both my parents were really healthy, they came to Boston and I happened to be playing Bernstein’s Three Dances Episodes from On the Town with the Boston Pops. I was playing E-flat clarinet, the piccolo member of the clarinet family, and the last movement, Times Square:1944 opens with an E-flat clarinet solo. I got my parents tickets in the first balcony at Symphony Hall. I could see their faces as I performed and they were so proud of me. I was always so grateful for their kindness and their support of my music and this was music of their era that I was playing. It was just a perfect moment. I was glad that I could share that with them because I’ve lived all my adult life not near my family. Concerts and events come and go and I don’t get to share them with my family. I’m so glad I had this opportunity and I’ll never forget it.

What 5 albums would you take with you to a deserted island?
  1. ​Bach: The Goldberg Variations by Glen Gould
  2. Appalachian Spring & Old American Songs by Aaron Copland with William Warfield singing
  3. Songs of the Auvergne by Joseph Canteloube with Kiri Te Kanawa singing
  4. Anything by Bill Evans
  5. The Platinum Collection by Nina Simone

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Meet the Musician: Adrian Anantawan

5/4/2021

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PicturePhoto by Scott Noble
Tell us a little about your background.
I was born in Ottawa, Canada. I moved to Toronto to get a little bit more support because I was born with a disability - I’m missing my right hand. During that time I was fortunate enough to be able to start the violin using an adaptation for my bow. That led me to going to school for music performance so I moved down to Philadelphia and then finished my masters in New Haven. I was trying to figure out what to do with my life afterwards so I ended up majoring in education. I went to Harvard Graduate School of Education which is what landed me in Boston. I then started teaching and doing some program leadership for a few years. That’s what I’m doing now at a school called Milton Academy. I chair the music department. This has been my 4th year. I also founded and run the Music Inclusion Program. It’s a non-profit that is based in Dorchester that serves students with disabilities. I continue to play from time to time around the world, but I think some of my most meaningful concerts over the last few years have been involved with Shelter Music Boston, just going to shelters, like CASPAR and Pine Street Inn, to be able to deliver programs for folks who have various challenges with transitional housing and struggling with other aspects of life that I think are very resonant with things that we struggle with as well. To be able to share music in a way that really brings all the people in as equals has been really lovely. 

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What’s your first musical memory?
I think probably singing to the radio when I was a young kid. I remember being on a flight going to Hong Kong and just being astounded by the amount of music that you could get at the back of a seat while flying 30,000 feet in the air. I thought that was great. I was literally on cloud nine.

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What drew you to Shelter Music Boston’s work?
I think it was the idea of translating privilege to service. That’s something that I always want to be doing due to my success despite the challenges I’ve had. When I moved to Boston I did some digging and research about various organizations that were really centering their practice around service and citizen artistry and Shelter Music Boston came up and I just had to learn more about them. I reached out to Julie Leven, and we’ve known each other now for 3 years.

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Tell us about a special SMB concert memory.
Every single one is memorable in some way. I think the first concert that I did was particularly memorable. I was practicing and waiting in one of the offices at the Pine Street Inn and just seeing inspirational quotes around me that were completely geared towards the residents of the shelter, but I remember taking photos and really being inspired and thinking, “Wow this a place where I’m learning so much already and I haven’t even started playing yet.”

I think another one was playing at the CASPAR Emergency Shelter and that was a challenge because I remember that in the middle of our concert paramedics were coming in because one of the residents had some type of a medical issue. We were trained specifically by Julie just to keep on playing. It was literally the show must go on type mentality when we were engaged in this work and I realized that this is not a concert where everyone is going to be completely still or silent like you would in a concert hall and that’s ok in some ways. That added a sort of determination to our music to really play for the sake of knowing that what we were doing was bigger than ourselves. I really loved the authenticity and realness of that and just really framing why we’re doing this because there were folks that need this aspect of humanity in their lives through music, something that I know has benefited me greatly, and I hope that we’ve done the same for the people in the shelters as well.

What are you most looking forward to as you step into this new role as Artistic Director?
Getting to know a larger community of artists. There are over 50 that are around Boston who are deeply engaged with understanding the connection between service, citizen artistry, and classical music in particular. To be able to know that there are other folks that are out there and we’re all working together to really deliver this essential service to the city of Boston, a city that we all love, is very galvanizing. I’ve always done so much of my work in isolation and sometimes it can be a very isolating and lonely experience but it's great to know that there are other people who are like minded and draw from their energy and their ideas and organize them in a way that really amplifies their voices. That’s the real joy in the work - to understand that we’re a big team, a cohort of people who are really trying to do something good in this work. I’m excited to actually perform in person at some point as well. I think that’s a big one for all of us to especially make real connections to the people on the ground. I think that will be so cathartic when we can actually do what I was doing 2 years ago in the shelters.

What is your favorite performance you’ve ever attended? What made it so special?
The most recent one was when I was teaching at Tanglewood. One of the students performers, a violist, played a viola romance. That was the last time I actually cried during a concert which is why it was memorable. It was just so moving to see young people in particular pour their hearts and energy into a piece that connects with them and to know that the work that we’re doing in education and the work that they’re doing as young people is really making all of us better. That was particularly memorable. I don’t think I have a favorite in that sense which is great because it means that we’re always in this position to be reinspired and reinvigorated when we go see a concert.

What is your favorite performance you’ve ever given?
When I was young and at summer camp, those are the most memorable in terms of when you’re young and you’re just playing for the joy. I remember playing Shostakovich’s 8th string quartet in a quasi-outdoor performance. During that time there was a thunderstorm going on and we were playing such dark music and in the middle of the piece where it was really intense the lightning would strike 15 feet away. It was in the upstate New York area so it was really close and we still had to keep going. The piece ends in silence, you just wait 20 seconds afterwards of pure silence, but all you could hear was the rain and the thunder in the background. It was just chilling how special that moment was as we waited for the final applause.

What 5 albums would you take with you to a deserted island?

  1. Cinema Serenade by Itzhak Perlman & John Williams
  2. Billie Holiday Standards
  3. Sibelius Violin Concerto by Christian Ferras
  4. Mahler Symphony No. 10 by the Vienna Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado conducting
  5. Bach: The Goldberg Variations (1956 edition) by Glen Gould
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Meet the Musician: Julian Loida

3/25/2021

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PicturePhoto by Georgia Rae Teensma
Tell us a little about your background.
I grew up in a family that loved to listen to music but didn’t really play music. In 6th grade I took guitar lessons for a year and then stopped. I also started playing drums and taking some drum lessons in late grade school and then I stopped lessons and just kinda taught myself. I started playing in a rock band and that band kinda took off so I basically learned to play through playing in this band that played around St. Louis. We were a young cover band and we rose up pretty quickly. I was just playing in bars when I was 15 or 16 because the audience really loved what we did and we were solid. Meanwhile, I was the last chair in my high school band as a freshman and I just kinda worked my way up from there. I practiced scales and I tried to get better. I got into a higher band and I started taking some classical percussion lessons, trying to learn to read music particularly notes and not just rhythm. Eventually I got into a youth symphony. It was really rare at my high school for anyone to be interested in classical music, but I had some friends who were in it as string players and I was really interested in the orchestra, I just loved the sound of strings. That took me to studying with the principal percussionist of the St. Louis Symphony.

When it came time for college I looked for programs that had both jazz and classical. I ended up going to Indiana University. While there I got really into all the music and just worked really really hard for years. I’d always been moved by Martin Luther King, Miles Davis, Robin Williams so I created these interdisciplinary works with speech, percussion, and visuals and basically started to intertwine social justice with music. I showed them to professors at Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music because I wanted to go there for grad school and they loved them and were very impressed and intrigued. New York seemed like where I should go next for grad school and I actually didn’t think Boston was where I was supposed to be at all. I ended up not getting into the New York schools, but I got into New England Conservatory and it’s a great school and I knew I was going to have a great teacher, Will Hudgins, who was my high school teacher’s teacher. I’d been to Boston a couple times because of Berklee and I did the Berklee 5 week program, but I didn’t know what I was getting into. I got to Boston and within a couple weeks I thought to myself, “I think I love this place.” Then a month went by and that turned to, “I love this.” I just started playing - I started playing in samba groups and I was doing all the classical stuff at school. That’s when I found Shelter Music Boston and I started volunteering. As time went on in grad school at NEC, I was more and more playing in the city and less and less concerned with school and by the time my last semester came around I was playing in the band Night Tree and we were touring. I was gonna be staying in Boston after graduation so I started freelancing and working at Club Passim. I’ve always known about SMB but the timing just worked out right now and I’m really really excited to be a part of this super awesome team.

What drew you to Shelter Music Boston’s work?
My mom’s a religion teacher and she’s very into the Jesuits. I grew up doing a lot of service work and went to food pantries often. My mom was always leading her classes and there was a lot of service work at these Catholic grade schools in St. Louis. After school I would go with her to bring her 7th and 8th graders to the food pantry or to the shelter. That was just a part of life. Then in high school I did my service hours at a homeless shelter where we would serve food and it was a really cool community there. I was always taught if you’ve been given you give back. When I got to Boston I found SMB and thought, “This is amazing. This is exactly what I want to do with classical music.” I got on a list to volunteer and realized how special it is to go into these shelters and get a total reset of perspective and also to see the musicians playing in these spaces.

What’s your favorite thing about working with Shelter Music Boston?
There’s 2 things that come to mind. The first is meeting Julie Leven in the interview and finding out she is also from St. Louis and her and I just totally hitting it off. She even knows the percussionist in the symphony there that I studied with in high school. I don’t meet many people from St. Louis in Boston so for the one person from St. Louis that I meet in Boston to be the founder of SMB was amazing.

The second thing easily would be the school programs at the Ellis school for a kindergarten class that we just started. These kindergarteners are the cutest things. We’ve just had one so far and I’m already excited for future programs at that school.
PicturePhoto by Georgia Rae Teensma
What else are you involved in outside of your work with SMB?
I started a podcast during the pandemic. I’ve been doing it now for the last year. It’s called A Millennial Musician and it’s available on all podcast platforms. It’s been amazing to celebrate millennials and talk about ourselves, our experience, and our relationship to each other and the generation around us. It’s been really great to celebrate those stories and have these artists come on and tell their stories from their own voices. I think that’s really powerful. I also play with harpist Charles Overton. We’ve been playing together for a couple years and we’re hoping to record some content in the near future. I have a solo album and repertoire and I’m planning to do more recordings of that. Pre-Covid I was touring with my solo music, playing drums in various bands, and freelancing around Boston. I’ve written music for ads and hope to one day write music for film. I also work at Club Passim.

I also love to travel and I’m a big cook. I treat cooking as seriously as music. I’m really into making new recipes and trying out food. I study Spanish. I take weekly Spanish lessons. I play a lot of music from South America and Central America. I’m trying to immerse myself fully in that culture better as an outsider and learning the language is a big part of that.

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What is your favorite performance you’ve ever attended? What made it so special?
When I was in high school I went with some friends to see our friend play in the youth orchestra. It sounds really goofy but the whole experience in my memory is just bright light, which was probably just the chandeliers of Powell Hall, but it truly changed my life. Of all the times for me to go, there was a marimba concerto. I just remember bright lights and it being the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. At the time it sounded like the heavens and I knew that I had to be in that group. I got completely obsessed and quit sports so I had more time to practice for the youth orchestra audition. Without that concert, I probably wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now.

There’s also so many jazz and rock concerts that have been amazing like seeing Wilco live in high school and seeing Dave Holland which was the first real jazz concert I went to. I’ve never seen people play their instruments that incredibly. I used to go to a music non profit in St. Louis called Sangeetha. It was all Indian music and they would bring world class Indians musicians there to play these ragas. The music was just unbelievable and the musicianship was some of the best I’ve ever seen - absolute technical perfection equally combined with musical perfection. The technique served the music and the phrasing. It was truly mind blowing.

What is your favorite performance you’ve ever given?
I loved the interdisciplinary concerts like the one I did at Chautauqua where I led 40+ artists from various backgrounds. Each piece was introduced by a poem. There was dance, sculpture, and electronics. It was really rad, just mega collaboration. There was a group piece at the end by Frederic Rzewski about incarceration and the cruelty of it. Having a full room of people at Chautauqua who hadn’t ever seen something like that and to be run by me and students in a way that the program was never able to do before was really special. They didn’t ask me to do it - I just did it and made it happen. That concert led to a lot of other connections and relationships and was just really special.

There also was a show outside of Asheville, NC a couple Falls ago. I was playing my solo vibraphone stuff. This woman came up to me after the concert and said, “I thought about not coming here tonight because this week my dog got run over by a car and it’s just been devastating for me, but your concert really gave me great joy and peace. It really allowed me to move on.” That’s what I want to do. Yes, it’d be great to make money and survive but that’s why I do this - to have that moment that I’ll have with me forever and to know that whatever is coming out of me has that ability gives me great meaning and purpose. Whenever I’ve connected with an audience member in a deep way and they’re able to share that with me - that’s the best concert.

What 5 albums would you take with you to a deserted island? 
  1. Bach: The Goldberg Variations by Glen Gould
  2. Sky Blue Sky by Wilco
  3. Blood by Lianne La Havas
  4. The Joker soundtrack by Hildur Gudnadottir
  5. A compilation album of Afro-Cuban music from an alumnae musician that I got in college

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Water for My Soul

8/13/2018

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During August 2018, Shelter Music Boston (SMB) audiences in homeless shelters and recovery programs will hear the world premiere performances of a suite of music called Water For My Soul.  This new work of music is the result of over two years of collaboration between the musicians of SMB and the audiences Shelter Music Boston serves at Caspar Emergency Shelter, Pine Street Women’s Inn and Shattuck Shelter, Lifebridge Salem, and My Sister’s House and Women’s Recovery at the Dimock Center.
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How did this collaboration work?  Release, by Danielle Williams, was the first piece of the suite to have been written.  This is a musical setting of the words of a 2012 Pine Street Inn-Shattuck Shelter guest.  She wrote, “The music reminds me that I am still human and renews my ambition to resolve my circumstances.” The poetry in her words compelled me to seek a composer to set these words to music, which Danielle Williams did in 2016.  Release was performed in shelter and public concerts in the autumn of 2016.  Audiences loved it. In particular, a shelter audience member said, “This is great…the words of someone who walked in my shoes inspired a new piece of music!”
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Julie Leven and Jennie Dorris leading a collaborative composition workshop at Pine Street Women's Inn in June 2017.
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I then decided to expand the collaboration to include many more shelter guests.  In June of 2017 SMB musicians presented six workshops which invited and inspired our audience members to create and evolve musical puzzle pieces into a short piece of music.  During the workshops audience members heard a simple musical idea and then were able to “play” with it. That meant: ask the musicians to play it higher, lower, faster, slower, backwards, forwards, in different rhythms, and many other variations.  The short piece that resulted after each workshop became the musical ideas Danielle Williams used to create Shells From the Sea and Wicked Spirits. The titles of these two movements of the suite result from the words of audience members attending the workshops.

Finally, composers Yu-Hui Chang and Francine Trester were inspired by the beautiful statements audience members have written following SMB concerts over many years. These composers have created The Path In Front of Me and In Our Own Words.  Both of these movements include words of Shelter Music Boston audience members.  The August 2018 performances of In Our Own Words even provide shelter audience members who would like to join the performance with an opportunity to participate in the concert by reading the quotes from previous audience members before the musicians perform Fran’s music.

The sublime music of W.A. Mozart and Leonard Bernstein, whose 100th birthday is being celebrated this year, will also be heard on SMB August concerts. ALL of the music reflects the creativity of many individuals, some with famous names, and some whose names we don’t know. I believe that the music of these world famous composers belongs on the same program as the collaborative creations of Shelter Music Boston audiences and musicians.   

The August 2018 SMB concerts celebrate creativity and collaboration. We are grateful to the Harvard Musical Association for their support of this empowering performance. And thank you for your interest and investment in this unique project!

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Meet SMB Supporters, Barry and June Dietrich

8/22/2017

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Barry and June Dietrich are lifelong music lovers. June’s father listened to show tunes and Barry’s father was committed to listening to classical music on records. Despite being tone deaf, his father had a discerning ear that didn’t tolerate anything less than the highest quality, a trait that he passed on to Barry. Together, Barry and June have cultivated their passion for excellent classical music as long time patrons of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Bach and Beyond Baroque Music Festival. It was at this annual celebration of period music in New York that the Dietrichs first met SMB founder, Julie Leven, and became taken with the idea of bringing the music they love to those in need. During a discussion not long after meeting several years ago, Barry told Julie, “That first talk you gave in the conference room [at Bach and Beyond] brought tears to my eyes.”

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Barry and June were both educated at Carnegie Mellon University, where June’s father had been a much beloved professor. Barry spent his career in electrical engineering and June worked as an editor of books and magazines and still does some editing for the Pittsburgh Symphony. The couple met while taking ice skating lessons and each have two children from previous marriages, with four grandchildren and a great grandchild who is almost 18 months old. The Dietrichs have spent many summers at Chautauqua, the institution in southwestern New York that comes alive each summer with lectures, performances, and recreation for all ages. In fact, six generations of Dietrichs have attended Chautauqua.

While health issues have slowed them down of late, Barry and June love traveling, particularly in Europe and South America, and riverboat cruises have been their favorite way to see the world. Music, however, has been Barry’s most enduring hobby. Beyond listening, Barry has been playing the violin since childhood and picked up the viola after college. Not the only musician in his family, Barry fondly recalled an aunt, who in his words was a “fantastically good pianist” and played recitals until she was 92, as well as his twin uncles who played violin and viola.

Shelter Music Boston is fortunate to have the generous support of such kindred spirits who are so intimately connected to and moved by the power of music. Last fall, the Dietrichs made the trip to Boston for SMB’s Music & Meaning Benefit Concert and they hope to return this year for one of our shelter concerts. According to Barry, it is “marvelous that the players are all professionals working with people who are down and out and homeless,” and told us that he and June give to SMB because it is a “worthy cause and unusual commitment.” SMB is proud to have a place among the other meaningful organizations the Dietrichs support, including the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Freedom from Religion Foundation. In his direct and honest approach to conversation, Barry said, “I want to support those groups that are working toward those things that I think need to be done.”

All of us at Shelter Music Boston are deeply grateful to Barry and June Dietrich for their friendship and their enthusiastic belief in our mission.

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Composing in Boston's Homeless Shelters

8/17/2017

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Written by Jennie Dorris

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For a week in June, I gave hour-long concerts to which I brought no prepared music. And these were less-than-typical concert venues -- every night I was in a different homeless shelter in and outside of Boston. I had my marimba, a load of different-sounding mallets, and an oversized sketch pad propped up on an easel. I wasn’t alone -- two incredibly talented string players joined; a violinist for the first five concerts, and a violist for the sixth. With just our instruments, our huge notepad, and our imaginations, we had a goal: Could we create an experience for people who were homeless to compose music with us?

​This project was the brainchild of Shelter Music Boston, who for the past seven years has offered monthly classical concerts to homeless shelters. (I've joined them as a musician for the past five years.) Founder and artistic director Julie Leven (pictured at left playing with me at one of the shelters), had a vision for a new work to be composed that was inspired by the audience. Two of those movements would be sourced entirely from this week of concerts where the audience composed with us. We would give the materials from these concerts to a composer, who would score out the music. The project was funded by The Boston Foundation’s Live Arts Boston grant. 

Getting Ready

Planning sessions took place over Skype between Julie (who lives in Boston), myself (I’m in Pittsburgh), and the piece’s eventual orchestrator Danielle Williams (who lives and teaches in the Middle East).  
 
​How could we get our audience to compose with us? While we knew that our audience was opinionated -- one of the best parts of a SMB concert is discussing the music with our audiences after the show -- we also knew we didn’t want to put them on the spot. We knew many of them would enter into this process without having played a musical instrument or receiving formal musical training. 

We settled on the idea that we would be their “musical jukebox” (an idea that was inspired by my work at the Hillman Cancer Center). We would present different options on our instruments and ask open-ended questions that would let them guide our playing. Their opinions would be heard through us. We broke music into its puzzle pieces -- including melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, timbre, dynamics, and tempo -- to help focus our plans for each shelter. 

We also knew that the process would be different at every place we went. Some locations had a separate room, and were quiet. Some enforced substance-free living. Other concerts were given in the middle of their living spaces, abutted by the sounds of running showers and flushing toilets.

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Each night we started with what we called a "musical meditation." We musicians would improvise together in a certain key, and we'd explain to the audience that we had no idea what the piece was going to be like before we started playing and reacting to each other. We asked them to keep track of any words or images that came to mind as we played. One of my favorites was: "It keeps the wicked spirits in line." These words guided the mood of each of the compositions. ​

Next, we'd move into the main focus of the night -- the musical puzzle piece that would begin their process of composition. At one location, we focused on harmonic progressions. We’d play through different lengths of progressions, and let them choose how many chords they thought should be involved in their composition.

Using the chords as the backbone, we had the audience clap in time until they found a tempo they liked. This would be the speed of the melody we wrote over a given chord. We’d improvise a few short melodies and they would choose which one they liked best. We’d play the melody on the different instruments -- did they like it on viola, marimba, or both? Did they want the viola to play high, and the marimba low? How loud should each of our levels be? Should Rebecca Strauss, the violist, use her bow, or pluck the strings? Should I use the loud mallets, the softest ones, or a combination? 

We’d play a draft of the composition for the audiences and let them give feedback. In our last shelter, guests told us to play the harmonic progression backwards and then ended up liking that progression best for their piece -- a really good brain workout for us musicians! 

What’s next

​After each concert, I'd take the giant notepad home and turn the notes from our score into musical notation we could send to Danielle, our orchestrator. We explained how the audience came up with each of their ideas, and the mood in the room from each night. 

Danielle is currently orchestrating the musical ideas from all six shelters into two movements -- one of those movements will be a solo violin piece for Julie, and the other will be a chamber ensemble piece for marimba and strings. 

It gets bigger from here! These two movements will join two other movements to become part of a larger suite. The two other movements are settings of the audience's words to music. One has been composed by Danielle, and the other is being composed by 
Yu-Hui Chang. 

In 2018, Shelter Music Boston plans to premiere the full multi-movement work in a public performance as well as at each of the shelters. ​

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