History

In 2013, after years of daily commutes into Boston for teaching and performing, violinist Marji Gere turned to her home neighborhood in Somerville in search of a deeper purpose as a musician and educator. This led to three years of volunteering at The Welcome Project, a local organization for recent immigrants. Through that service, Marji engaged in exploratory, musical play with youth from across the globe, and ran creative workshops for adult English language learners. 

In 2017, Marji undertook a performance tour of a dozen of Somerville’s community spaces and afterschool programs. The highlight of this Somerville Arts Council-funded project was the warm welcome and enthusiastic response from the Mystic Learning Center, an afterschool program based in the Somerville Housing Authority.

That fall, with support from the St. Botolph Club Foundation, Marji worked with Fluffy Bergmann (now-retired MLC director) and pianist/composer Dan Sedgwick to plan the first full season of Around Hear, a free, all-ages, public concert series at the Mystic Activity Center. Meanwhile, the SHA approved the installation of a piano in their main community room and Marji and Dan began offering free violin and piano lessons to members of the Mystic community. Many of these students have performed on the concert series.

Since then, Marji and Dan have put on 23 concerts featuring 44 guest artists (including musicians working in and beyond the classical music tradition, dancers, puppeteers, visual artists, storytellers, and poets), and provided lessons to over 40 community members, ages 4-70. They have also commenced programming in two SHA facilities for seniors and people with disabilities.

This season, they are infusing a new level of creativity and energy into the concert series, and have shifted instruction from one-on-one lessons to inter-generational classes and workshops. By harnessing the social-emotional benefits of group listening and music-making, they hope to help alleviate the pain of isolation felt by all—to various degrees—during the pandemic, and play a meaningful role in strengthening their local community’s sense of interconnectedness.