Meet the members of the Board of Directors of New Horizons International Music Association for 2012. In addition, meet the founder of the New Horizons Program. Click any name below to read about that person. You can send an e-mail to any of them by clicking their name in their biography.
After retiring from the IBM Corporation (sales & marketing in California and New York), I did volunteer work at Corporate Angel Network (CAN) in White Plains, New York. CAN arranges transportation for cancer patients on corporate jets, when a flight plan coincides with the patient’s need to travel for treatment in the United States. This was a most rewarding activity. I played a lot of trumpet in high school and college, then put the horn down until after I retired. I also sang with multiple groups in high school and college. Music has again become an important part of my life in retirement. I currently play the trumpet and flugelhorn in the Simsbury, Connecticut Community Band, the (35-piece) Harmonious Brass Choir, and a big band. I am a member of the International Trumpet Guild and have attended their annual conference. My wife, Sharon, and I have attended New Horizons band camps at Cambria, Olympia, Interlochen, Chautauqua, Ithaca College, the University of Delaware, and Unicoi. The Delaware band camp was a great experience, coming exactly 50 years after I attended my first band camp at the University for the concert band and marching band. Each year I also attend band camps at Allegheny College, Lake Placid and Williamsburg. We did a concert tour of Austria, northern Italy, and Greece with Herb Schultz (University of Vermont) and the American Winds Concert Band. Thru participation in band camps, I get to experience playing under many different directors during the year, learning from each one. We used to go to band camps for the music - now we go because of the people we will meet there. If you, the reader, play an instrument and have never been to a band camp - you are missing out on a marvelous life-experience! In addition to the above musical activities, I enjoy all aspects of photography and working with digital recording technology. I am able to employ both interests documenting our wonderful grandchildren as they pursue their interests in music and sports.
I am Lucette Fortier and a flute player in The Villages New Horizons Concert Band (Central Florida). I was born into a musical family; my father was a bassoonist/organist and my mother, a violinist. They met at Ithaca Conservatory (now Ithaca College). Their lives centered around music. My music experience began at a age 5 when I began piano lessons, followed quickly by violin lessons. After 4 years, and very slow progress, I announced I didn’t want to play violin anymore, and my violin teacher told my parents that this was a good decision. I decided I wanted to play the piccolo which I had heard at high school football games. I soon learned that the flute came before the piccolo. I began flute lessons in the 5th grade. My father was my high school band director, and band was the center of my high school days (Miami Edison) and my early college experience (Univ of Miami) where I was a music major. When I left college, I truly abandoned my world of music. I went to work as a law enforcement agent during a time that female agents were relatively rare in that field. After 25 exciting years, I retired. During this period I never played my flute. I married, had 2 wonderful daughters, and found a wonderful second husband whom I met on an FBI bombing scene. How romantic! Andre and I have been married for 32 years. He is very supportive of my renewed interest in music. However, since a nun in grade school told him just to move his lips and pretend to sing, he has never ventured personally into the world of music. For 13 years we lived on a sailboat in Miami and then Key West; upon my retirement, Andre took a transfer to Juneau, Alaska. We both got new wardrobes!!! Alaska was a wonderful experience, but due to elderly family, we returned to Florida after 3 years. It was at this time that we moved to The Villages, Florida, a hyper-active retirement community of about 80,000 people. I joined The Villages New Horizons Concert band in 2003. The Villages currently has 2 large (115 plus) bands, not to mention jazz band, swing band, strollers band, orchestras, etc. I have founded a flute choir group that performs around the area and was also instrumental in forming a flute choir in Vermont, where we now spend our summers. I have also joined The Rutland (Vermont) City band that plays weekly summer concerts in the park. I discovered the New Horizons band camps when both of The Villages band directors got invited to direct at band camps. I attended both Ithaca and Chautauqua band camps with directors Jean Butler and Ward Green. Since then, my summers always include at least one band camp. Andre has been known to accompany me to camps, dragging along our 3 horses for his entertainment. Music was always important to me, but New Horizons has enabled me to become more involved in music during my retirement years than I ever dreamed possible. It is truly a central focus of my daily life. And I am very excited to be serving as a board member for New Horizons - another musical experience that has already led to meeting new people and being exposed to new places and challenges. Thank you Dr. Roy Ernst; you have given so much to so many.
I, Eve McGrory, retired teacher (M.Ed.), former FBI stenographer, widow, mother of two, grandmother of four, know that music has always been one of the loves of my life. My earliest memories include my mother singing nursery rhymes, one grandmother always humming a tune, other grandparents teaching me the songs and dances of their European heritage. Just last year while touring Bratislava, I asked the guide if she recognized the song I was about to sing. You can imagine my delight when she immediately joined in singing a song in Slovak that my grandparents had taught me so long ago. Piano was a major part of my life from ages six to twelve, when my focus went from practicing to other pursuits. As a new mother in my twenties, I returned to serious study of the piano but became frustrated when the level of play I had as a child was out of reach. So piano-playing was strictly for my own enjoyment until I began teaching, at which time piano again became part of my daily routine as I played and sang for the ceremony which began the school day for approximately one hundred second graders for many years. Then, just as I was ready to retire from teaching in 1997, Kate Levy was forming a New Horizons Band. The timing was perfect! I was finally going to play in a band, something which was denied in childhood due to my gender. My daughter let me borrow her old clarinet and I began to recycle myself musically, this time as a clarinetist. And so I play on, currently in a New Horizons Band (and attending band camps), a community band, a German band and a flute or recorder/clarinet classical duo, ever thankful to Kate Levy and Roy Ernst for opening so many musical and social doors in my retirement. I have a whole new set of friends from all over the United States and Canada, which is a gift. Lest you think I’m entirely single-minded, my other loves include tennis, Scrabble, long walks, swimming, travel, gardening, fine dining with family and friends, dancing, languages, audio books, etc., etc. Last but not least, I recently took some group piano lessons at the senior center, bought a drum pad and some sticks, took a few lessons from the percussion instructor in our NHB, and had the privilege of a semi-private lesson with Joan Cantor, NHB percussionist extraordinaire, at Chautauqua. “No one is promised tomorrow,” but I’ll surely be playing on one instrument or another with like-minded people as long as the opportunity arises. Join me! “If music be the food of love, play on...” Shakespeare.
I restarted my musical career in 1999 when I joined with the New Horizons Band at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. Because I was a late registrant, I was the last person to be given an instrument; I was hoping for a French horn. But the fellow in line ahead of me refused the instrument he was offered (he had his granddaughter’s clarinet in hand) and the program coordinator handed me the only remaining instrument – a clarinet. After a 40 year hiatus, once again I was learning to play a clarinet. My granddaughters think all Nanas play clarinet! And it’s great fun (dare I say retribution) insisting that my family come to my concerts - in fact, I’m fortunate that both my parents are coming for the second time around. In addition to a being a band member, I have had several roles in my New Horizons Band (London). I chaired the advisory committee for 3 years, with a group of dedicated volunteers coordinated a band exchange with the NHB (Peterborough) for 145 participants, and led the charge in commissioning 2 pieces of music for the London band. I have participated in 4 band camps at Chautauqua and the first NHB caravan in Florida. The New Horizons Band has smoothed the road to retirement. A manager, facilitator and coach/educator at heart, I spent most of my career as an administrator in Ontario’s post secondary education sector, with 20 years specialization in the field of Resource Development. My primary strengths are relationship development and project management. I have served as a community volunteer on several local and provincial boards – United Way, Habitat for Humanity, Theatre London Foundation, and King’s College Foundation. In short, I’m a fundraiser by profession, a mother/grandmother by design, a clarinetist in my dreams, and a pragmatist in real life.
I love playing the tuba. After a 35-year hiatus from making music, I unpacked my schoolboy trumpet and joined a small local community band, but it was only a few months until the dark side beckoned and I descended to the low brass. After a year of playing in 2 community bands, I went in search of adult band camps and found the New Horizons camp at Interlochen which opened the door to the world of music making outside of my remote northern New York community. Shortly thereafter, one of my band directors introduced me to the Association of Concert Bands, which was about to hold its 2008 convention in Corning–my boyhood home. The thrill of that 4 days of concentrated music-making under fabulous direction with so many like-minded souls set the hook hard and fast. It became clear there was no turning back. I retired from a career as a civil/structural engineer in private practice in Canton, New York to make room for more music. I have played in wind ensembles on the campuses of SUNY Potsdam’s Crane School of Music and Saint Lawrence University, and for 2 years was tubist with a local brass quintet. For the past year, I have also been a member of a handbell choir, satisfying the urge to play more than one note at a time. I have recently turned some of my energies for personal music-making into a campaign to get other adults into music, and in September 2009, I founded the New Horizons Band of Northern New York in Potsdam, with nearly 30 senior adults turning out for the first rehearsal, some of whom had never played music before. Current enrollment is now at 40, and we are making frequent public performances. As there was no one waiting in the wings to conduct the band, I have taken on the baton as my primary New Horizons instrument, and am also studying percussion during our class sessions. I have also appeared as guest conductor (okay—I won the raffle!) for the Orchestra of Northern New York, a regional professional orchestra, and I play tuba in the Potsdam Community Band and the Seaway Winds (Cornwall, Ontario). In addition, I serve on the Board of Directors of the Association of Concert Bands. When not making music, I keep busy with duties as a trustee for our community hospital, tending the garden, attending classes with our adult continuing education program and enjoying the open skies as a newly-minted private pilot.
Sally Bowers was the founding director of the first New Horizons Band in the State of Illinois at the Music Institute of Chicago in 1995. In the year 2000, her dedication to the “New Horizons” concept led her to found the North Shore New Horizons Band. Sally is also the director of the New Horizons Band of the DePaul University Community Music Division. She is a member of the music faculty of Lake Forest College, a member of the North Suburban Symphony Orchestra, and is an active conductor, clinician and adjudicator in the Chicago area, as well as regional and national New Horizons events. In January, 2012, she begins a three year term on the Board of the New Horizons International Music Association.
I tell people that I got my music genes from my kids, both of whom played through college – in fact, my son has a graduate degree in music composition. I also note that there are music genes in all lines of my children’s ancestry. But instrument playing skipped my generation for both my wife, Doris, and me. Until NHB came along, that is. Maryann Flock, the wonderful director in Illinois, started us in 1998 in the “Standards of Excellence” beginning series, eventually taking us through all three books. We finally became trained musicians – my wife on clarinet (now on bass clarinet) and me on trumpet! Who would have thought? I found that our NHB musicians are a self-selected group of doers: active, involved, inquisitive, humorous... in short, wonderful people to know and delightful companions. It was only natural to want to give back to my local band in some ways, so I helped with the newsletter, the ten year anniversary celebration, and other tasks. Now it is only natural to expand that effort in furthering the goals of NHIMA. I am lucky and honored to be seated on this Board of Directors. I have recently retired and moved to my home state of Michigan where I now am a member of the Saline NHB. Along the course of my life to get me to this point, I have served in the U.S. Navy, graduated from Michigan State (BS) and Penn State (MS), been married (40 years and counting), become a father of two great kids, and worked in various capacities in the industrial hydraulic and pneumatics field. And now I am a musician!
Hello and Welcome to New Horizons Bands and Camps. When I joined in 1999 the FUN began for me. I was 60, still working my own business of book sales and struggling with a trauma. I bought a student clarinet, since I had played eight years in school and loved playing in a 100 piece marching band, and a symphonic band. A Hartford, CT, New Horizons Band and a community band welcomed me. At my first band camps at Lake Chautauqua and Lake Placid, NY, I went by myself and met friendly experienced musicians, willing to help the beginners. I met Eve McGrory, a beginner, who introduced me to Maryland musicians. We have roomed together and gone to camps in Cambria Pines, CA; Unicoi Mountains of GA; Williamsburg, VA. For several years between camps, Eve’s bands have welcomed me at rehearsals and performances (three on a July Fourth weekend). I learned that older musicians do not define themselves by their work or former careers. What a revelation! Life beyond my business, that I loved. The Hartford NH Band needed a tenor sax, so after a year of clarinet, I learned tenor sax and like it better. When I went to Sydney, AUS, band camp, just my mouthpiece went with me for a borrowed sax. You don’t have to be in a NH Band to go to a NH Band camp. Just become a member of NHIMA for a discount on the camp you want to attend. Sign up early for your skill level on line. Maybe you’ll want to start a band in your area. Help will be on the way for you. At NHB camps your fun is only limited by your attitude. In July 2011, I had open heart surgery and an eight day set back. My goal was to be at three camps in four weeks in September/October at Williamsburg, Chautauqua and Williamsport, PA. With the driving help of my camper friends and afternoon naps, I had wonderful times. What a good way to heal. Making music is great therapy. Come join us!
I am a member of the Desert Foothills New Horizons Band in Phoenix, Arizona. I play flute in our Concert Band, and as of October of this year, alto sax in the Jazz Band. I have been a member since the beginning of our band in 1995. At that point in time, I had just retired as Music Department Secretary at Grand Canyon University and as piano and saxophone instructor at Monty’s Music in Scottsdale, Arizona. I was playing saxophone in the University Wind Ensemble. When the opportunity arose to join the New Horizons Band, I was excited and took that opportunity to start a new instrument, the flute. It has truly been a very rewarding experience. I have attended band camps in Snowmass, Chautauqua, Georgia, Cambria, Interlochen, New Mexico, Washington, and Wisconsin; all of which gave me the opportunity to meet and make many new friends. I have always been a “crafty” person and am always looking for new and interesting challenges. My latest is “scroll sawing”. Now that is a challenge!!! As with most every member of New Horizons groups, the list of interests, hobbies, etc. could go on and on. This is the one very special thing about working with this organization - everyone has such an amazing background! It has enriched my life and the lives of so many people in so many ways. That is why I feel it is so important for us to do all that we can to make it available to all that are interested in making music, making new friends, and keeping our minds and bodies active and alert. The investment of our time is worth everything!
Roy Ernst is a professor emeritus of the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester, where he taught for 25 years and chaired the music education department for 12 years. In 1991, Dr. Ernst started the first New Horizons Band at Eastman for the purpose of creating a model program emphasizing entry and re-entry points to music making for senior adults. Later, he became the founding director of the New Horizons Music Project, funded by the National Association of Music Merchants and the National Association of Band Instrument Manufacturers. In that capacity, he used the New Horizons Band as a model to assist in starting more than 100 similar programs in the United States and Canada. Publications by Ernst include books and articles on conducting, flute performance, and music education. He is the founding director of The Aesthetic Education Institute in Rochester, New York. He conducts frequently at New Horizons Institutes-national and international events for New Horizons band and orchestra members. Before moving to Eastman in 1975, he taught flute, conducted the wind ensemble, and was a member of the music education faculty at Georgia State University. In 1984, he was a visiting professor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in Sydney, Australia. Recognitions and honors to Roy Ernst include the President’s Arts Achievement Award from his alma mater, Wayne State University; an Outstanding Educator Award from the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra; The Richard Snook Award from the Monroe County Music Educators; an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, in recognition of his work in adult education; and recognition as one of the Grand Masters of Music Education by the Music Educators National Conference, the 85,000 member professional association for music educators. Ernst began his career in Michigan, where he taught instrumental music in elementary and secondary schools. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Wayne State University and a Ph.D. from The University of Michigan. Roy lives in Tarpon Springs, Florida with his wife Pat, who is a food journalist. They travel frequently to visit family and attend New Horizons events. ~~~~~~~~~~
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A one-hour interview entitled “Chordially Yours”, with New Horizons Founder, Roy Ernst, is available for purchase on DVD. Roy talks about his school days and early music experiences. He also talks about his early career and his time at the Eastman School of Music. Of special interest to those involved in New Horizons is the description of his original idea for a band for retired people and how his philosophy has grown into an international program. To order the DVD, send a check for $25.00 (which includes shipping) to Peggy Hall, 508 Panorama Trail, Rochester, New York 14625. 