{"id":31591,"date":"2022-07-09T12:25:25","date_gmt":"2022-07-09T16:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=31591"},"modified":"2022-07-09T12:32:23","modified_gmt":"2022-07-09T16:32:23","slug":"senior-musician-brings-retirement-community-together-through-power-of-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/senior-musician-brings-retirement-community-together-through-power-of-song\/","title":{"rendered":"Senior musician brings retirement community together through power of song"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dean Jablonsky has always had a love for music \u2013 and is no stranger to seeing how a few notes, arranged just right, can bring people together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had a front row seat playing alongside Canadian greats like Gordon Lightfoot in the 1970s and 80s, and now, as a resident of Kingsway Place Retirement Residence, he is bringing his talents to the table helping his fellow residents discover their voices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last Tuesday, the Kingsway Place Choir performed for residents\u2019 families and special guest Mayor Tom Mrakas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group has come a long way since a chance conversation in Kingsway Bistro planted the seed which bloomed into a choir that is keeping seniors engaged and having fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne day I was sitting there with my coffee, the girls who knew I was a musician said, \u2018Why don\u2019t you start up a choir?\u2019 I wasn\u2019t sure, I told them, it depended on how many people really wanted to do this,\u201d Dean recalls. \u201cIt started out with about four of us with this idea, we tried to pull in some people who liked to sing — or didn\u2019t like to sing, it didn\u2019t matter. If you had a voice, it sounded great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt our first practice, we had about six people show up but it kind of snowballed. More people got interested so they started coming down. I started arranging songs as I play guitar and keyboard, and I wanted to challenge them by not doing the ritual old folk songs like \u2018Row Row Row Your Boat.\u2019 I challenged them to sing Linda Ronstadt, B.B. King, Gordon Lightfoot and some other artists I knew personally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge was a success and there now 17 choir members who have mastered more than 20 songs that Jablonsky has tailored to their talents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI tell them not to worry about being professionals. Nobody\u2019s a professional singer here. It is to have a social aspect, to have them all doing something that they enjoy. It has developed into a kind of family thing, really. All of us feel like part of a family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One member of this \u201cfamily\u201d is Pat Davies, who has also had a life-long love of music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An enthusiastic contributor to the choir, he says being a part of the initiative has inspired \u201cuplifting joy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe talk together, we all love to sing and it gives us an uplifting feeling,\u201d says Davies. \u201cThose who hear it seem to really enjoy it and they\u2019re thrilled we have something like this, and I hope it continues after I\u2019m gone. It\u2019s not like bringing someone in from the outside singing to you; it\u2019s people on the inside singing to the family and that\u2019s a different gig altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it brings social harmony, social fun, at least that\u2019s what I saw \u2013 it\u2019s fun and we hope it is fun to the listeners. If we get booed off stage, that will be a different story!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was no danger of that last Tuesday and there were smiles all around as they took their place in the rear parking lot of Kingsway as residents, their families and dignitaries filled the terraces ready for the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahead of the concert, Katherine Corbett, a Kingsway volunteer who has worked closely with the choir, shared her excitement over how this group of musicians has come together towards a common goal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am an enthusiastic and grateful volunteer and what I\u2019ve seen is it brings a sense of camaraderie \u2013 and there are definitely health benefits to singing,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a stress release and doing things all together feeds us, too. We don\u2019t sing enough in our everyday life these days and I think this is wonderful. In the past, I have enjoyed being in the choir because you\u2019re considering tempo, enunciation, volume and all of those things and it is a very immersive activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey have a lot of fun, a great sense of humour and the jokes between the songs are a lot of fun. You feel like you\u2019re part of a team!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dean Jablonsky has always had a love for music \u2013 and is no stranger to seeing how a few notes, arranged just right, can bring people together. He had a front row seat playing alongside Canadian greats like Gordon Lightfoot in the 1970s and 80s, and now, as a resident of Kingsway Place Retirement Residence, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8dx","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 14:30:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}