BLACKBOARD; Musical Minds Of the Elderly
By Noam Cohen
Published: November 5, 1989
NEAR 91st Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, a motorist really needed to get someone's attention. The driver honked the horn - first a steady blare, then staccato beeping, then a fretful combination of the two.
Nearby, inside the 92d Street Y.M.H.A., Lucille Schein was also making sounds - playing a spontaneous piano duet with her teacher, John Balamos, in front of a sizable audience of elderly listeners. When the sound of the horn outside became too intrusive the music stopped, and someone in the audience rolled her eyes and smiled, saying ''another improviser.''
This afternoon recital was very much on the casual side: no sheet music, no metronome, pianists out of rhythm, a violin out of tune. But Mr. Balamos and his students don't mind. Better to make noise, he believes, than to suffer in silence.
For the last three years Mr. Balamos has been teaching that lesson to a group of about 10 retired men and women, most of them in their 70's, in a weekly class titled ''Creative Music.'' Most have had music training, but the class doesn't presume to improve upon their skills. Instead, Mr. Balamos, who also teaches music to victims of Alzheimer's disease and has taught young musicians at the Manhattan School of Music, aspires to impart creativity and help overcome the fear of public performance.
Mrs. Schein, who is 76 years old and lives in Manhattan, explained: ''You're learning to create, learning to improvise, learning to listen and overcome fear.''
In a typical exercise, teacher and student agree on a musical key and dive in. The next few seconds are an anxious process of the two trying to play in rhythm and at the same volume. It is hoped that during the three or four minutes of music-making they will approximate a similar musical style.
Mr. Balamos calls these ''classical jam sessions.'' The class even has a classical scat singer, 74-year-old Sydell S. Gorelick, whose music is a succession of trills.
Mr. Balamos's guiding philosophy is simple: Society, he says, reins in creativity by making people embarrassed about public performance and personal style.
Mrs. Schein said that she quit the class two years ago, soon after she started, because she found improvising so uncomfortable. Now she is an admitted ''ham,'' saying that if she isn't called up to perform more than once, she tells a friend ''to ask for an encore.''