IRIS will return in 2025. Details to be provided later.
The IRIS Music Project
ON STAGE’s first major project was to bring the IRIS Music Program onto the AMV campus during the first half of 2024. IRIS is a grassroots organization that cultivates collaborative relationships between residents “of retirement communities and health care institutions, caregivers, and professional musicians. It is located at the Charles E. Smith Life Communities, in Rockville, MD. Details of its vision and activities are available at https://www.irismusicproject.com/.
From February-June 2024, three talented IRIS musicians affiliated with the National Philharmonic – Amyr Joyner (violin), Kimia Hesabi (viola), and Yoshi Horiguchi (bass) have been with us on campus. They have performed in five monthly concerts and have created opportunities for residents to participate, as exemplified by their concert on May 17th in which they accompanied residents in a dance/choral work by Philip Glass, a dramatic precis of Shakespeare’s “Othello,” a reading of a poem written by AMV’s Dorothy Mbori, and songs by Brahms, Purcell, Gluck and Irving Berlin.
In addition, the IRIS musicians have combined music with visual arts and poetry and have inspired residents in their drum circle. They have created unique musical experiences in dance, movement, and acoustic jam sessions, to the delight of AMV participants. They have also led Thursday morning open rehearsals, which have developed in a completely non-traditional way into lively, freewheeling conversations between the residents and musicians about the choice of concert pieces and how to perform them.
Our IRIS project has been extremely successful and has received highly favorable feedback from residents, such as “creative” “sheer joy” “a blessing” “the feeling of connectedness” “bring it back again!” It will return early in 2025.