Hello and welcome to Focus on OLLI. What is OLLI? OLLI is a program at UNLV dedicated to active retired or semi-retired individuals who understand the importance of keeping themselves engaged. OLLI is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNLV. Every month this program will dig into favorite classes, interesting teachers and members as well as special events offered through OLLI.
Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a Kun V studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Keith McMillen 0:16
Hello and welcome to focus on Olli. Olli is a program at UNLV, dedicated to retired or semi retired individuals who remain engaged and active in civic activities and lifelong learning. Ali is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNLV. Ali is made possible by support from the Bernard Osher Foundation, established by philanthropists Bernard and Barbara Osher with a mission to support lifelong learning, higher education and the arts. This series is designed to give you an in depth look at the Olli program and encourage you to join in the fun. All right, today, our focus is going to be on music. One of our stronger curriculum at Olli is music. We cover things like celebrating musical theater, jazz appreciation, even the celebration of Jewish American songwriters. This semester, as well as teaching guitar and ukulele, one of our most popular topics this morning, I'd like to today, I would like to introduce Sonia Feldberg, who is a teacher of our jazz appreciation course, and she's brought a special guest down to talk about the jazz appreciation program. Sonia, please.
Sonia Feldberg 1:37
Well, I am very pleased to have with me Chadwick Johnson, who is a soulful singer and writer of beautiful music, and we often have him in class, he is most gracious to come and donate his time and his voice, and I'm going to turn it over to him so he can tell you A bit about what he does in our class.
Chadwick Johnson 2:02
Oh, thank you, Sonia. It's great to be here with you and Keith, and thank you so much for having me. The Olli program is just a really, really cool thing that I learned about through Sonia and I love coming and teaching the class. It's jazz appreciation and more. So we hit all different styles of music, and it's really, really cool, fun program.
Keith McMillen 2:26
What kind of what kind of jazz Are you partial to? Well, you know, I
Chadwick Johnson 2:31
am one of those eclectic artists that love all kinds of music, but there have been several years in my music career where I did really focus on jazz, and one of my favorite things about jazz music is the improvisational aspect of jazz, and I think you can bring that into every style of music that living in the moment that jazz really accentuates so beautifully.
Keith McMillen 2:57
Yeah, one of the areas that people often talk about is that improvisational. And in fact, after a program when the musicians just get together by themselves, is when you'll hear that even more if you're lucky enough to participate exactly, can be fascinating. Sonia, your background is music. You had a musical upbringing. I'm told
Sonia Feldberg 3:20
I actually do. I do. My father was a concert violinist by by trade. He was actually a barber. It was something he was forced to actually learn as he was a survivor of the Holocaust. So he did play violin. That was something that helped him survive, and he did that with the Detroit Symphony when he was liberated to Italy. Actually, my mom was an opera singer, and they met in Italy. He heard my mother singing. So when they came to the Detroit area, my sister was an infant, and then I was born, and I immediately started taking dancing lessons and singing. I was brought up with every genre of music, and I gravitated to tap dancing, even though I danced with the Detroit ballet company and I taught tap and when we moved out here, I continued to teach tap dancing because I was too short to be a show girl. So it was the 70s. Disney was not prevalent, and there was discrimination against short girls. So I continued to dance and to teach dancing, and I danced with the third, the third generation step brothers who were very, very famous with with the Bob Hope movies, and they were much like the Nicholas brothers at that time. And it was really quite a journey teaching for him. It was quite exciting. And I taught. For him for a few years, and then I did my thing. I graduated from UNLV with quite a few degrees. Part of green spun, and then I migrated to ollie fantastic. Started teaching jazz appreciation here.
Keith McMillen 5:16
Now on the other side of the table, we have another guest, and this is Diane Howard, who is part of our ukulele workshop. You've been an Olli member for a little while. Yes, 25 years. I don't know if that's a record, but it's a pretty good record. When did you start with the ukulele?
Diane Haworth 5:38
Oh, I would say, about eight to 10 years ago, I discovered that they were teaching teaching it, and I've been in music all my life, so I decided to take it and find out about how to play it, and to my joy, It's become a very important part of my life.
Keith McMillen 6:02
Very nice, very nice. So Sonia, if somebody wanted to come into your jazz appreciation class, what typically would they hear?
Sonia Feldberg 6:12
They would hear mostly jazz. But again, it is and more, like Chadwick had mentioned, and I do bring in local entertainment. So I try to make people aware of the entertainment that we have here and that they can go and see and support, because live music is just amazing. It fills the soul. So we need to go out and support live music as much as we can. So every week I do try to have somebody come in that is performing on the strip or in local clubs here in town and share what they have so that we can partake of live music.
Keith McMillen 6:54
Wonderful. Chadwick, you you perform around the city on occasion. I do?
Chadwick Johnson 7:00
Yeah, I have a show coming up at myrons Center, yeah, at the Smith Center, our wonderful Smith Center here in town. So yes, I do. I do perform in town and and and enjoy the wonderful, supportive community that we have in Las Vegas. It's unlike any other place. It's very special. There
Keith McMillen 7:21
is there any particular thing you especially like to focus on? I mean, you're talking soulful kinds of things, and I understand some of that, but anything else, I mean, you're looking at old standards or anything like that.
Chadwick Johnson 7:38
Well, my heart is writing music and sharing my perspective through music on all the subject matters that surround us in life. You know, I think we artists are students of humanity, and we study humanity, and we bring it into our art form, mine being music, and we share it with others. So I, you know, I love to focus on original music, but of course, through that, I love to share my interpretation of the music of artists that have inspired me and hopefully inspire other people. So for example, my show March 18, I will be celebrating the music of Bonnie Raitt, Chris Stapleton, Stevie, wonder, Michael McDonald, several great soulful artists, as well as mixing in my own original music. So that's kind of a fun way to do it, and it gives people an idea of what they are going to hear when they come to the shows
Keith McMillen 8:39
that certainly would be a big help. Yes, yes. And Sonia, you have a special guest showing up early in March. I
Sonia Feldberg 8:52
do, and we are all excited. And it is Clint Holmes who will be performing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and telling his journey, how he became who he is today, and that would be on March 5. So we're really excited about that. And also we do a lot musically with brain health. Oh yeah, Chadwick does come in, and he has done some music for the Lou Ruvo center, and he has presented it in some special programs that we've done with the brain health department.
Keith McMillen 9:30
Fantastic. And in fact, Diane, your ukulele group, got involved in some of that also.
Diane Haworth 9:35
Yes, we performed for that event, and it was a lot of good information, and it just highlighted how important music is for the brain. And as senior citizens and people who come to ollie, it's so important to keep that brain active and and. The love of music. It's such, such a joy to learn new songs. We do all kinds of songs, from the Beatles to country music and and ukulele technique in the workshop. And so it's a very, very important part of Olli,
Keith McMillen 10:26
very nice, and you have, you'll be performing at least at the end of the semester. Probably, we
Diane Haworth 10:33
might, I don't know anything specific, but we often do
Keith McMillen 10:39
cool, excellent, excellent. So where's jazz going next? From your point of view, Sonia, from
Sonia Feldberg 10:49
my point of view, it's going wherever it wants to lead itself. So just like the improvisation, it is, it is a part of everyday life, and people don't realize a lot of times what jazz actually is. When I get that question, oh, I don't like jazz, I'm like, do you like the American Songbook? And they're like, yes, well, that's jazz. That's a lot of those songs are considered in the jazz genre, and they don't realize that. So it is a very big part of everyday life that people don't realize.
Keith McMillen 11:25
If you're not directly involved in music, the genres can be very confusing, because, you know, you people, I am of a different generation than you. I mean, I grew up listening to big band music, but some of that was really considered jazz also, or at least it crossed over a little bit. Do you have any better definitions nowadays? Chadwick,
Chadwick Johnson 11:51
you know, I think something really cool that's happening in music now is every so many things are multi genre. You're seeing people like, you know, I just heard this awesome duet yesterday of Chris Stapleton, country, soulful, country blues rock voice with Andrea Bocelli. You're seeing, and it's a stunning song. And you're just seeing so much of that crossover, which is really, really cool. And I think the power of music is to bring people together. It does it like nothing else. And so I love seeing the genres crossing, and we're borrowing little pieces from jazz in this pop song, or we're borrowing a classical, typical classical musical idea, and we're infusing it into a pop song. And so I see that as where it's going. I think you're going to see more infusion of the genres melting together. And I hope that it's a positive thing and brings people to, you know, maybe someone who, like Sonia said, doesn't think that they enjoy jazz music when they have those little flavors of it, and with another artist that they like, maybe that'll draw them into a new genre. So I think that's where it's going.
Keith McMillen 13:11
Okay? That should be that should be exciting. Yeah, very exciting. What are the biggest challenges you face right now. Are there any just in terms of reaching an audience?
Chadwick Johnson 13:26
I guess, if you want to think of it like challenges, you know, the business is always a tough thing. It's hard to take something that, you know, we, who are musicians and artists, we get involved in our art because of what it does to our heart. You know, it's a heart thing, and it's hard to take something like that that is so personal and so intimate in a way, and make a business out of it. So I think that's something that every artist has to find that balance. Because if you want to be able to do it every day, all day. You do have to make a business, business out of it, you know. So it's, I think that's the most difficult thing. I like to think that I'm finding that balance. My focus is really on connecting with more people each year. How can I connect with new people through music? And I'm hoping that keeping that in the forefront will let everything else fall where it should, you know, so
Keith McMillen 14:25
fantastic. What about an ollie itself? Are there more music in the plans that you know of Sonia?
Sonia Feldberg 14:32
Well, we try to bring in more music constantly, music just like the guitar has been added. And it really is important. Again, it is important for the brain, for cognitive everything. It just it really does help the aging mind, the aging body. Music is just a really good thing, and we need more of it in our lives, whether it be instruments. Mental vocal is just a very important part of life, and I know that I have to have, if I don't hear at least live music at least once or twice a week, I'm having a problem. Oh my I have to go listen to live music.
Chadwick Johnson 15:19
Super, super supporter. Sonia Feldberg over here, I love it. I love it. You know, though, that's the cool thing about Ollie, like you keep bringing it back to the brain health. I wrote a song called remember love about the loss of memory, about dementia. And it's kind of a love letter to someone who's struggling with the loss of memory from the perspective of a caregiver. And I have, I was inspired to write this song because I have personally seen how, you know, music can, I think it can fend off, you know, the loss of memory, but also how it can be just so magical for someone who's going through that, through struggling with memory loss. So I love that Ali is is making music available, especially to the senior community, in a really beautiful way. Yeah.
Keith McMillen 16:09
On the other side of that, we have another class that is extremely popular, called celebrating musical theater, taught by somebody who was in a performer in musical theater in this town for a long time, and he's reviewing the early days of Broadway, the roots of all that, like starting with some of the early musicals Oklahoma and things like that, And the characters involved, plus Ollie has options for extracurricular activities, if you will. They've put together a tour group of people who want to go to New York, and the instructor arranges to get tickets for Broadway shows in in March. They're off for four or five days to see four different shows on Broadway. And if you want to talk to somebody who's enthusiastic about that, you need to look up our instructor, Bruce Ewing. He's good at that. So what is ahead for ukulele? You've got a beginning class this semester and a workshop. Yes,
Diane Haworth 17:19
the beginning class has been going for a year or two, I think, and then the workshop is an extension of that you take the beginning class, especially if you don't know anything about the ukulele. But if you do, you can come into the workshop. I mean, if you already have certain skills, you can come into the workshop, but the workshop is really a place where our our skills are extended. He's always a little bit ahead of where we are and which is a good teacher. And so we're working on various ukulele skills to to enhance our experience.
Keith McMillen 18:08
Interesting, I think a lot of people would not recognize that the ukulele has a significant skill set. I mean, any musical instrument does, but if all you've been exposed to is somebody strumming a few chords, I think they're, they're missing the boat a little bit,
Diane Haworth 18:30
yes, and that's the reason why he pushes us forward. And they, they call the ukulele the happy, the happiest instrument, and because it's so easy to to learn how to play, but after you've learned to strum the few chords, you know, you want to get a little more sophisticated, a little more skillful with your with your music, and that's part of the program you know. You can go from the very beginning into advanced. And we have people of various ages. And so when we are singing for each other, you can see the difference in the generations, in the songs they choose. And so we do a lot of different songs and music from various from various generations.
Keith McMillen 19:27
Okay, okay, interesting, lovely, wonderful. You know what? Let's let we gotta we have the opportunity to hear Chadwick. Why don't we run that cut that we talked about, and then let's hear Chadwick explain it to us or talk to us what the inspiration on it was. I used to
Chadwick Johnson 19:48
give it all
where my heart on my sleeve seems I've lost my shit and. I'm calling.
I used to take the fall. Oh, I tell the other cheek. This whole walked out the door, but this feeling it
won't ever leave. I got found.
Me cracks
in the armor. But the fact still
remains, you
can't because I keep on, keeping on, I keep finding My feet, keep going strong. Can help unshakable, unbreakable Well,
I'm dizzy from the fall,
brought back down to my
knees up, but it's so hard to see the walk before the cross, just to dream rising up from The Deep there's a current that's racing through me and
me, But the fact
still remains, you can't break me. Could
me, because I keep
on keeping my feet on she can
count The days, but the one thing I tell you, I
one thing I tell You, God's
voice in the veins,
cracks in the armor, but the facts do remain. I keep finding my feet, keep going.
So going straight COVID. You
Keith McMillen 23:45
okay, Chadwick, now that we've heard this, where did the inspiration for this come from?
Chadwick Johnson 23:50
Well, first of all, it's an honor to to share one of my original songs with you. This is a song I co wrote with my co writer, Kalani cuipo. And I know, you know, a few years ago, we all went through a really hard time. You know, for me, a lot of my gigs came to a really long pause, and there was a lot of uncertainty around my career. And as things started to come back together, I found inspiration for this song. I started to feel as gigs started to come back from that long pause, I started to feel like there was hope again, and I started to feel strong again. I started to feel resilient, and I started to realize that I was unbreakable. I could I could remake myself and get back out there and make things happen. So that's what this song is about it's about resilience,
Keith McMillen 24:44
fantastic, something that all of us can take as a message. I think ukulele more than just a stringed instrument that who wasn't used to play, that was Arthur Godfrey used to play that for those of you. And born and raised in the 50s, that might be a familiar name the rest of you people, yeah, you'll have to go to Google and look it up. So thank you. Thank you very much. We're going to leave you with that, and thank you for coming and joining us. And I appreciate the participation here. Next month, we'll be back with a completely different topic, and we're still debating what it's going to be, but we'll let you know in the meantime, thank you all for coming. Thanks for listening to focus on Olli, there are several ways to get more information. Our web address is Ollie O L, L, i.unlv.edu You may also email us at Ollie at UNLV. That's Ollie O L, L, I, A, T, U, n, l, V, at sign unlv.edu, you can also just give us a call at 702-895-3039. 28953394, Monday through Friday, between the hours of eight and five. Except of course, on university holidays, you.