The Cleveland Music Settlement's Creative Aging Ensembles Are Giving Older Adults a New Rhythm

Harold Deweaver has choir practice three times a week. When he's not practicing 1960s pop songs or turn-of-the-century spirituals, you might find him playing Beethoven as a second-chair violinist. Or at home running through his major scale.

And none of this mind you is for college credit.

Deweaver is 65, and a student and performer in the Music Settlement's Creative Aging program, a suite of orchestras and ensembles dedicated to teach the 55 and over crowd music performance. And it's not just senior edutainment: the Settlement's four groups are designed for, as they say, "lifelong learners" seeking an earnest exploration of music theory and principles.

"It's tough sometimes," Deweaver said, after he finished up practice with his fellow Settlement Singers on Wednesday morning. "You have to have a love for the music."

Taking this love and musical rigor serious for aging adults led the Music Settlement, this month, to create a brand new Creative Aging Department, as to reflect the national need to cater to the U.S.'s growing population of older adults. Last week, they hired Afi-Odelia Scruggs, who had been working as a Settlement outreach teacher since 2017, to help rally intrigued seniors who longed for more stimulation post-retirement.

Departments like the Settlement's may be a necessity by decade's end. Americans' life expectancy is still on an upward trend.

By 2034, there will be more retired folks than grandchildren running around. And by 2050, the country's 65-plus population will more than double, to about 87 million people. "America will no longer be a young nation but an old one," a recent New York Times article assessed. "It's time to prepare."

"And it's a different kind of aging because people are healthier," Scruggs said, sitting in her office strewn with sheet music and donated guitars. "But they're also finding out that if you do these kind of creative activities, it builds community. And that kind of building community—it's brain health, it's mental health, it's physical health."

Whether its flamenco and djembe drum clubs in New York or bookmaking and watercolor classes in Salt Lake City, arts organizers wholly believe in the mind-body benefits of doing arts rather than just experiencing them.

In a 2009 study by the MetLife Foundation, some 78 percent of people surveyed over a year in a creative aging arts program "felt a decrease in loneliness" after a year's time. Sixty percent said they "felt healthier" overall.

"This is why it's not just a senior activity," Matthew Charboneau, the chair of the Settlement's Center For Music, told Scene. "We're helping to stave off dementia. Improve brain health. Fight isolation. Even things like breathing and seeing—these are all de-stressors. And they get all that!" What began with a $6,000 pilot grant in 2018 to pay for instruction and materials ballooned after the Settlement scored a larger grant from the Cleveland Foundation at the end of 2023. That led to Scruggs' hire, a role that will allow the Settlement to bring its practices and performances into nursing homes and assisted-care facilities across Cuyahoga County. And, of course, get new students.

Along with a weekly string orchestra, chamber ensemble, Settlement Singers and Old Time string meetup, Scruggs is thinking about adding a big band jazz and Motown instrumental group, along with a West African dance session adopted for older bodies. "You're not young," she said. "So we're not going to move like you're young."

Yet it's the Singers that acts as the program's gateway into more traditional, and more musically complex, study. Charboneau estimated that roughly half of the group, which is at about 24 singers, comes to class with at least a few years of lessons at hand. The other half, he said, are beginners, or those who haven't sung a triad "since high school."

"It's almost like getting voice lessons again when we're here," Liz Gockel, 74, told Scene after practice Wednesday. "There's a little bit of theory, which I like."

"Some people get some theory, too. Because some people don't know how to read music," Deweaver, her friend and bandmate of five years, added. "So, you know, they can pick that up on the stuff like that."

At Wednesday's hour-long practice, Gocket, Deweaver and 12 other Settlement Singers ran through their latest setlist, from the Beatles' "Across The Universe" to Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" to "Overjoyed" by Stevie Wonder, who Deweaver claims he's distantly related to. As pianist Linda Allen accompanies, Kim Lauritsen conducts the singers in an excitable mixture of care and high-energy direction.

"I think I heard someone who was late," she said, in the middle of "Across The Universe." "Remember to use your eyes. Cross your lips around that note. Ohhhhhhmmmmm."

"I think that was me," Deweaver admitted, laughing.

Soon, before the cohort heads out to their regular lunch together, the singers take another stab at "I'm Goin' To Sing," the traditional spiritual. "Remember, men," Lauritsen said during the group's fourth take. She nodded to Deweaver's row. "You have to start out as Tom Jones, then be his backup ladies."

The group tried again, producing a sound one could call harmonious. "Yes! Beautiful.That's what it needs! Exactly right," Lauritsen said. She raised her hands to start the one count. "Alright," she said. "One more time just so we get it right."

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