Category: Music Committee

Introducing –

“CollingtonPresents”

Logo by Clarita Ricketts

The first in this 7 part series was broadcast on our local TV Channel 972, on Saturday, October 10th.  Dr. Bud Gardiner presented a psychological backdrop to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as offering personal insights.

The second introduced us to Women’s history professor and scholar, Dr. Nancy Hewitt  spoke about the effort to grant women’s suffrage including the complexity of African-American women’s efforts. 

This entire series will be shown on select Saturdays at 3 pm. 

The next event is November 7th.  Lyle Denniston retired last year after 72 years in the news business including 62 years covering the United States Supreme Court for various newspapers, magazines and online news organizations.  Although not trained as a lawyer, he taught for eight years at the Georgetown University Law Center and various colleges and universities, and lectured and published widely.  His book, The Reporter and the Law: Techniques of Covering the Courts remains used in newsrooms and in journalism education. 

Future Presentations include: 

  • 11/7 Lyle Denniston – “Is the Constitution Out of Date?” 
  • 11/21 Natalie Groom – “Whistling Hens”
  • 12/5 Phyllis Marsh – “Women’s Rights Worldwide: Finding Ways to Make A Difference”
  • 12/19 Peter Basquin – “Peter Basquin Plays! Piano Masters in Three-Quarter Time”
  • 1/9/21 Katie Basquin & Co. – “Snippets from Samantha Rastles the Woman Question.”

So please join us, as we highlight just a few of us who make Collington our special place.  If you have any questions, please contact Heather Huyck, Lois Brown, or Bonnie Cronin, the “CollingtonPresents” team.

Peter Basquin – Our New Resident Concert Pianist

Contributed by Marian Fuchs

Peter Basquin, a new Collington resident, recently gave his first in-house recital. His career has included recital and concert appearances in the US, Europe and the Far East.  He has performed at the Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center and at Carnegie Hall.  He and his wife Katie moved to Collington this year, and now he’s playing in our auditorium!

At the end of October, Peter packed the hall with a record capacity, and entertained the rapt audience with a range of pieces ranging from a Scarlatti sonata to a Bolcom rag.  He included an impromptu by Shubert, a piece of fun called Kitten on the Keys, with two lovely longer pieces:  Haydn’s sonata in E-flat Major, and Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ sonata.  Peter introduced his pieces with interesting information about their structure and the lives of their composers.  It was a magical hour.

One member of the audience later wrote: “Watching you play just a few feet away from where I was sitting, I saw your economy of movement and felt the connection from head to heart to hands to keys to the strings . For us, the listeners, you gave a profound sense of involvement with the complexity of the sounds and forms emerging in front of us.  It was just wonderful to be a part , for a short while, of your life’s passion.” 

He concluded by saying, surely on behalf of all who were there, “I hope you would be willing to do repeat performances on a regular, if not frequent basis!”

Music at Collington is going from strength to strength.  We now have the Collington Singers, under the professional supervision of maestro Marilyn Haskel as well as the Kollington Kats, whose players grow in skill and quantity with every performance.   We are in the third year of having two young musicians-in-residence from the University of Maryland playing, along with many of their colleagues, a series of performances throughout the year.  We have frequent and varied exciting weekend concerts arranged by resident Carol Kempske, and music every weekday evening by talented residents in the Ivy Lounge. I doubt a single CCRC our size could even come close!

The Music Continues!!!

By Elizabeth Gill
On Saturday afternoon a group of residents filled the Ivy Lounge for an up-close look into the artistic process. One of Collington’s new artists in residence from the University of Maryland School of Music, clarinetist Melissa Morales, was joined by flutist Ceylon Mitchell in an open rehearsal. They perform together in the Potomac Winds, a chamber music collective based in the Washington DC area.
2018 09 01 Melissa Morales clarinet and Ceylon Narvelle Mitchell flute
Melissa and Ceylon were working on perfecting a series of pieces by Glenn Gould. Although Mr. Gould was known primarily as a pianist, he composed a series of works for flute and clarinet. While not yet ready for a professional performance, Melissa expressed a desire to engage with residents as soon as possible. She certainly met that goal, having been on campus for only one week!

Our Intergenerational Music Program Featured as National Cutting Edge. Newspaper and TV

Collington is now the Poster Child for Intergenerational programs!

Samantha Flores and Collington are the featured story (with photo of our auditorium) in The New York Times reporing on a newly issued report on inter generation initiatives for seniors.  The story begins.

When Samantha Flores wasn’t taking classes at the University of Maryland for her master’s degree in cello performance this past academic year, she could often be found hanging out with a bunch of 80-somethings. Ms. Flores, 28, along with another music student, was participating in a new artists-in-residence program at Collington, a nonprofit retirement community in Mitchellville, Md.

As the article reported:

Marilyn Haskel, a 72-year-old resident of Collington involved in selecting the students, said the young people often invited fellow music students to practice on the grounds, resulting in pop-up concerts. With no family nearby, Ms. Haskel said, “it was delightful for me to sit down and have conversations about their careers and what they’re planning.”

When residents learned that Ms. Flores didn’t have a car, they often drove her to campus. Ms. Flores struck up close friendships with many of the residents, including one she met in September who had recently been given a brain cancer diagnosis.

“We bonded over Bach,” she said, engaging in lengthy conversations about him. When the man died in February, Ms. Flores played a piece he had requested at his funeral: Bach’s “Sarabande: Suite for Solo Cello No. 5 in C Minor.”

“I promised I wouldn’t cry, but you can’t help that,” she said. “It was a very emotional moment.”

The trigger for the article is a new report from Generations United and the Eisner Foundation survey of 180 intergenerational programs.

That report itself cites a Harris Poll that found:

[P]lenty of support for programs that bring diverse age groups together to fend off loneliness. Ninety-two percent of Americans believe intergenerational activities can help reduce loneliness across all ages.

Moreover,

A strong majority of Americans (94 percent) agree that older people have skills or talents that can help address a child’s/youth’s needs and 89 percent believe the same about children and youth addressing the needs of elders. More than four in ve Americans also say if they (85 percent) or a loved one (86 percent) needed care services, they would prefer a care setting with opportunities for intergenerational contact rather than one with a single age group. Americans were also clear that age segregation is harmful, finding that almost three quarters (74 percent) agree that “programs and facilities that separately serve different age groups prevent children/youth and older adults from benefitting from each other’s skills and talents.

Given all that is now happening in this field, way beyond music, we will need to keep innovatintg to stay in the lead — another major task for our strategic planning process.  Indeed, onsite child care was an idea that came up frequently in the process.

P.S.  One little thing I would like the photo committee to do is take on making a set of before and after photos of our residents, showing the huge impact grandchildren visits have on us.

P.P.S.  The TV version is on WJLA, here.