​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!”

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.

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.​

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.

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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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.

​Blank-page performing 
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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. ​