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Arts & Entertainment

Veterans' Day Memories Through Music

Juilliard students play old standards for Forest Hills residents at Central Queens Y.

It's the height of World War II, and you are with friends at a local USO-sponsored dance, when the band on stage breaks into Benny Goodman's rendition of "Mean to Me."

For at least one audience member at the on Thursday, those were the memories that came flooding back when two Juilliard jazz students visited to play requests and other standards of a bygone era in American music.

Second-year graduate student Will Anderson, and second-year undergraduate student Samora Pinderhughes, saxophone and piano players respectively, pleased a crowd of seniors as much as they displayed their tremendous musical abilities.

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They immediately conjured single verses of songs brought up in audience discussion and glided through highly improvised versions of some of the classics from the 1930's through the early 1960's, from Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," to Dave Brubeck's "Take Five."

Unlike the piano and sax solos, the concert was planned well in advance, as part of a year-long relationship between the Central Queens Y and Juilliard's Robert Gluck Community Service Fellowship. Each year, Julliard accepts forty of its students from an application process to play their music for seniors around New York City.

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"We go to all kinds of places—hospitals, nursing homes, community centers like this," said Anderson.

Lauren Fredston-Hermann, director of senior programs at the Central Queens Y said the monthly concerts have been great. "[The concerts] bring a whole new level of sophistication and professionalism to this program. It's wonderful," she said.

Anderson, the saxophonist, said, "It's definitely great to get reactions, when I play, from people that lived through this music."

Fredston-Hermann was eager to have a larger audience, with only 20 or so members of the Central Queens Y. "The event is targeted for seniors, but it's open to everyone," she said.

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