Music, Arts Bring Ring House Residents Closer Together

Residents sing along with members of the Iris Piano Trio. Photo by Lisa Helfert Photography.

Gail Rottweiler wanted to get to know her neighbors in the retirement community on a deeper level. So, the Rockville Ring House resident set off on a year-long effort that culminated in a three-day music and arts festival.

Rottweiler worked with a fellow resident and Lauren Latessa of the Iris Piano Trio to bring her idea, “Voices of Ring House,” to life Jan. 12 to 14. Their goal was to celebrate the residents’ creativity and share their unique stories with the community.

“Voices of Ring House was a three-day music festival, celebrating creativity and sharing our stories through art, music and written work; all of the different art forms [were] represented in the festival,” Latessa said.

Latessa, a cellist and the executive director of the Iris Music Project, runs an ensemble-in-residence at the Charles E. Smith Life Communities. The three professional musicians — Latessa, pianist Jiyoung Oh and violinist Joanna Owen — have worked with community members there to develop an “exciting creative exchange” since its start in 2016, according to the Iris Music Project’s website.

“Gail Rottweiler and her friend, [Lisa], got together and [thought], ‘How can we know our community better? How can we know our neighbors better and get to know each other in a deeper way?’” Latessa said. “That was the opening question we spent a year thinking about.”

The musician wanted to know how the arts could play a role in this exploration, and Rottweiler wanted to highlight her fellow residents: “We knew we wanted to get direct residential input.”

Latessa began by interviewing 40 Ring House residents about their connections to music and art and important aspects of their lives.

“We found that people wanted to share their stories and have their stories celebrated,” she said.

Charlotte Goldy, a Ring House resident of more than five years and a member of its music committee, helped Latessa behind the scenes. Goldy said that, in their interviews, residents discussed the moment they fell in love with music, what types of music they were drawn to and when they started playing an instrument.

“For some of them, it was an escape,” Rottweiler said. “For some of them, they were started by their parents or by another member of the family — a whole range of experiences. Music meant something to them, and I think that’s part of the beauty of this particular program.”

“There’s a real variety of [reminiscences] because there’s quite a variety of people here,” Goldy noted. “One of my neighbors talked about there being a piano in the house she was living in as a child, and she started [learning] to play the piano and [shared] what that meant to her in terms of the rest of her life.”

Latessa brought in composer Ian Power, who took excerpts from each of the 40 interviews and turned it into an “original piece of music composed just for us.”

Composer Ian Power wrote an original piece of music for the Ring House community. Photo by Lisa Helfert Photography.

“He created a musical track to go under the content of the interviews,” Latessa said. “He played music as [the audience is] hearing incredibly inspiring stories of how music has always played a role in somebody’s life, how it helped them overcome a really difficult time in their life, just capturing for all of us how music and the arts enhances our quality of life.”

Some Ring House residents are musicians who had performed professionally earlier in their lives, Rottweiler said, which is why it’s so important for residents to contribute to a program such as Voices of Ring House and showcase their stories and talents.

Ring House displayed residents’ original artwork including poetry, photography, sculptures and skits to the 100 residents who attended the festival. One participating resident wrote and directed a skit about three renowned composers, which residents performed at the festival with puns aplenty.

“Music is used as a catalyst for all kinds of creativity,” Latessa said.

Lauren Latessa of the Iris Music Project holds the microphone for a Ring House resident. Photo by Lisa Helfert Photography.

The Iris Piano Trio also performed a song during the festival that had been inspired by a resident’s painting, Goldy said, adding that that resident had never painted before this experience. The program has unlocked a new hobby for some, while rekindling others’ long-forgotten interests.

“There are some people here who have never drawn or painted, and that’s their main activity now,” Goldy said. “They love it; they just go to the art room and start to paint.”

Rottweiler, who wrote her first poem in eighth grade, has gotten back into poetry: “I’ve rediscovered some of my early talents and influences.”

Ten residents each contributed to a poetry book that highlighted the oft-overlooked stories and perspectives of women from the Old Testament.

“Jewish values did play a really big role in this festival, thinking about inclusion and connection,” Latessa said. “It was really special for me because it felt like this moment where the women of Ring House came together to express … the idea that the women’s voices and perspectives need to be elevated.”

She said the program alternated between poetry and music. Latessa and the participating residents spoke to the importance of interactive music and arts programming in retirement homes.

Voices of Ring House was a three-day music festival featuring all types of art by residents. Photo by Lisa Helfert Photography.

Rottweiler expressed her gratitude to Latessa for hearing her out a year ago and implementing her idea for a program residents could contribute to.

“It’s been really special,” Latessa said. “I think that’s the most important thing: to know our neighbors. There’s a group of people that now know each other at a much deeper level than we ever did before. To be able to celebrate that and to see that reflected in the programs, I think is really powerful for many different people.”

[email protected]

_{Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.}