Jennifer HicksWeekly Wrap Up
Our week was full of creative conversations about animals, water, questions and inspiration. We had a special visit from Ontario's Minister of Seniors and Accessibility and we're excited to share our collaborative poetry/art piece that was submitted to the Art Gallery of Ontario and is now featured on their website. AND we want to share a recording of our interview on Zoomer Radio. Read on!
We started out the week with Simon's Music Is Life class. We discussed the topic of animal music. Simon asked us what animals come to mind when we think of music being made by animals. We said:
Robins
Woody Woodpecker (the drummer of the animal kingdom)
Elephants
Frogs
Horses
We watched videos of animals "singing":
Toadfish - the male sings (boops and grunts)
Loons wailing
Breaching humpback whales
Waltzing whales - we waltzed along
Our favourite animal sounds are:
Moose - come from Moose Factory or Moosonee as well
Don’t have a favourite
Dolphins
Cat purring
We sang Blackbird by the Beatles and listened to Simon’s new song with humpback whales. Please enjoy the sounds of humpback whales in the video below.
In Steve’s Music History and Piano Concert Class we welcomed The Honourable Raymond Cho, Ontario's Minister of Seniors and Accessibility as our guest.
Minister Cho offered a beautiful speech about his musical family and the importance of music and culture in our lives.
Our theme for the day was water. Steve showed us a video of a waterfall and then played us his composition “Waterfall".
Interesting Facts about Water:
71% of earth is covered by water
75% of the human brain is made up of water
One can only live up to one week without water
Icebergs contain the oldest water on the planet - people sell pieces of icebergs for money in Newfoundland
We discussed how are water and music are connected:
Fluid, life, always moving, gentle, rippling, it all depends… is it cold water?
Flow, natural
Splash!
I prefer champagne and music.
Both make me happy & want to dance.
Melodramatic.
Very good! Healing for the soul.
Life! Production!
Cows will produce more milk with nice music
We sang lots of songs including Wave, Ain’t Misbehaving, How Deep is the Ocean, and heard some jazz from Steve.
We enjoyed doing some Qi Gong exercises and Steve ended the class with an improvisation of water on the piano.
Robin's Creative Cafe class was themed around ??? QUESTIONS ???
She shared that questions are important to our brain health. We are hardwired to question for survival, innovation, progress and social/emotional/cognitive development.
When asked to give 2 words to describe how each person was in the moment, at the beginning of class participants responded that:
When asked what questions they frequently are asked, participants answered:
I get asked... what we are having for dinner, what are you doing, why are you not finishing your food, did your children call you today.
When asked what questions you should never ask, participants responded with..
How much do you weigh?
When are you expecting?
How old are you?
Did you get a covid vaccine?
Some funny types of questions include “burning question”, popping the question, cross examining questions, ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies…
We watched a stop motion video of Emily Dickinson’s poem “I am nobody. Who are you?” and then were inspired to write our own version of this poem. Read it below.
Jennifer started out her Nia: Movement & Music class with a gentle warmup.
We enjoyed talking about inspiration - what inspires us and what inspires artists.
We looked at some videos of movement in nature and imitated them. We moved like:
twisting strands of DNA
red and white blood cells
lava flowing
a butterfly emerging from a cocoon
We also created sounds for what we were seeing.
We shared wonderful descriptions/reactions from participants including:
We listened to some great songs while we did Nia and we also sang I Can See Clearly Now and Show Me the Way to Go Home,
We have some projects and media events we'd like to share with you! Read on.
In honour of Senior's month, which was in June, we submitted a piece of collective poetry/artwork to the AGO's Portraits of Resilience call for submissions. Here it is, on their website!
Our piece tells the story of the resilience of aging. It encapsulates our ideas about bouncing back from life's obstacles and arriving in senior hood with a sense of satisfaction and continuing purpose.
You can read it below!
Have you heard our interview on Zoomer Radio's "Finding Your Bliss" show?
Below is a short excerpt of the interview.
You can listen to the whole interview here.
We also had an article published in the Finding Your Bliss online Magazine called "Bringing Bliss to Memory Loss Through Music." You can read that here.
We've got lots of creatively engaging classes for your next week! Book your classes here.
