New Horizons Band for adults 50 and older celebrates 15 years

Back in 1998 when a gallon of gas cost $1.15 and Google, Windows 98 and iMac were the newest things in the computer world, Maryann Flock, music teacher at Benedictine University, received an assignment to create a community band for senior adults.

She decided to follow the New Horizons model developed a few years earlier at New York’s Eastman School of Music. New Horizons founder Roy Ernst knew that adults 50 and older could learn to play music just as well as kids — and get just as many benefits from the experience.

His idea was so successful that, 20 years later, the New Horizons International Music Association boasts community bands in most of the 50 states as well as in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and Ireland.

In DuPage, New Horizons Band had a modest beginning. On a cold February night in Lisle, only three people showed up to the band’s very first rehearsal — a trumpet player, a saxophonist and a drummer. But three was all it took.

“The way we got new members was ... a notice to all the area churches. (Benedictine) University sent out a news release to the local media. Through these materials, we climbed up to nine members in the first four months,” Flock said. “Then we got our big break 10 months after we started. The newspapers came out and did an article with pictures about our ‘fledgling’ band. That took us from 13 members to 25 in less than one month, with people calling in to join the band. That’s when I knew we were going to be something special.”

New Horizons Band DuPage now has almost 50 members and recently celebrated its 15th anniversary with a concert.

Many members who have joined New Horizons Band over the years attest that the music-making experience has benefits in better health and sharpened mental acuity.

“I’d had a stroke in 1998 and was required to do speech, occupational and physical rehabilitative therapy,” clarinetist Marion Reis, of Wheaton, recalled. “This included stacking dimes, putting screws into bolts, squeezing grips, assembling apparatus, etc. These made-up tasks seemed boring and pointless.

“At church one Sunday, they passed out fliers inviting interested persons over 50 to join New Horizons,” she continued. “Although I hadn’t played for over 40 years, not since college days, I was welcomed. In my heart I knew picking up the clarinet with its many fingerings and quick manipulations — all demanding precision in timing and breathing properly to make music — was a whale of lot better than the senseless repetitions my therapists were forcing on me.”

“Then to discover a band director as kind, tolerant, knowledgeable (and) with (as) high professional standards as Maryann Flock, with a ready and generous sense of humor thrown in, was more than what the doctor ordered,” Reis said.

Some musicians recruited each other. Others had a family musical connection.

“I drove my kids to band for years, always wishing I could play too,” Eileen Sejnost, of Darien, said. “My son stopped playing his baritone in college and it was just lying around. I always loved the sound of it, so I decided to try the band after reading an article in the paper.”

LeeAnn Cosper’s thoughts of the band’s early years include memories of Ben Hall.

“(It was) on the campus of Benedictine University, our original home. The atmosphere of the old building (now torn down) was great, from the creaky auditorium to the cramped rehearsal rooms on the third floor. There was even rumored to be a ghost,” she said.

After a decade on the Benedictine campus, New Horizons Band DuPage took a momentous step, forming itself into an independent nonprofit organization and relocating from Lisle to Naperville. The band now rehearses in the Naperville Community Concert Center. A small board of directors, led by President Marilyn Stangeland, of Downers Grove, guides the band’s business affairs.

Today, as it was 15 years ago, the band is a mix of complete novices, intermediate players and accomplished musicians. “Let’s play the D scale ... that’s D ... D for (composer Antonin) Dvorak” is Flock’s way of announcing a musical scale to limber up.

“Maryann tells great stories about the composers of the pieces we played,” Stangeland said.

“Maryann is and always was so patient with us,” Sejnost added “She had to be pulling her hair out at times.”

When Flock announces “tutti” in the middle of a rehearsal, her musicians quickly get to know what that Italian word really means: “Everybody get ready to play — right now!” The mother of three preteen boys, Flock also lets fly an occasional knock-knock joke at rehearsal breaks.

The band annually performs in several concerts and parades in the Western suburbs. Naperville member Mary Kay Kluge said she enjoys looking out at an audience of younger faces.

“I joined when I went to a high school band concert of my niece and nephew and bemoaned what I had missed in school — never being in a band. A good friend told me about New Horizons and that it’s never too late to learn something new,” she said. “I always enjoyed looking at the audience of grandchildren — payback for all the concerts we listened to.”

New Horizons Band DuPage, one of four such bands in the Chicago area, features the full band as well as offshoots from the main band — NHB Too for beginning and intermediate players, a jazz ensemble, woodwind consort, brass choir and a new German band.

What keeps most New Horizons Band members engaged is the opportunity to do something new and challenging in a supportive environment.

“NHB is important to me because of the people. Getting together week after week with a group of interesting, friendly people and all working together toward the goal of producing a concert is fun,” said flutist LeeAnn Cosper, of Downers Grove.

For more information, visit newhorizonsbandassoc.org.