We still have a few days left in 2024. In the wider world there is war, disease, famine, a fierce political divide, as well as hate, fear, and evil.
But there is also joy and love. And where they are, there’s music.
In my columns, I try to cover the music and music makers in the community, whether it is from the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, St. Tim’s Discovers concerts, schools and universities, or organizations such as BeInstrumental that are helping musicians make that music.
I find everything I write about interesting — and hope you do, too. Those are the stories of the people and places that have tugged at my heart or have given me insight into the way music works. Here are a few of the stories, in no particular order, that stick out to me.
Music heals. It accompanies or jogs the memories of loved ones. A certain song can make you remember a time or place, a moment of laughter or tears.
Mary R. Smith was still reeling from the death of her husband of more than 40 years, Hollis Merrick. She joined St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Perrysburg and built a network of support, and in turn, she gave support back by volunteering through the church.
One thing she found appealing was the Discovers Series, which features concerts by various local artists. The church suggested she fund a concert to honor her husband and perhaps find healing.
“It just felt right because he loved music,” she said. “And I just thought, oh cool, to honor someone with something that was meaningful to that person.”
After all, she said, her husband and she used to say that they married their best friend.
So on March 3, Toledo native pianist Anthony Pattin and Toledo-area clarinetist Lesli McCage Simmons, the clarinet instructor for the University of Toledo, presented a concert.
Merrick had played the clarinet once. And the bagpipes.
At that March concert, the program was works from Maurice Ravel, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Robert Schumann, William Grant Still, Margaret Bonds, Paul Reade, Johannes Brahms, and Leonard Bernstein.
“St. Tim’s has been a big part of my reinventing myself as a person without necessarily having my best friend by my side,” Smith said. “Of course, you have to do things. You have to make life, or else you just turn into a little vegetable.”
And music makes that possible. Here’s to the local churches that bring music into people’s lives to help them heal.
Music also helps people keep young. Just ask Flo Metzger, who marked her 100th birthday in a jazzy way. That was fitting because she spent most of her life singing it.
She met some of Toledo’s jazz legends while on her way to becoming one. At a century, she’s still performing “Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home” in the key of C.
That’s how the mother of six convinced better-educated musicians that she was no amateur, even placing second behind the famous Teresa Brewer in a singing competition long ago.
She sang “Bill Bailey” to nearly 60 guests at her July birthday party on July 14, her actual birthday, at the Second Sunday Jazz Jam.
Among Metzger’s guests were the cream of the city’s jazz artists. including Rick “Ragtime Rick” Grafing and Ray Heitger of the Cake Walking Jass Band, Doug Swiatecki, who knows everything about jazz in Toledo, and more luminaries.
While she did most of her singing in the Toledo area, she also performed as a sit-in in Las Vegas during a trip she took with her husband and another couple. She also took the stage at the Stranahan Theater when the Lettermen, a pop trio that began in the late 1950s, came to town, and they invited her to sing. She sang “Bill Bailey.” Yes, in the key of C.
Metzger said she also sang with the Sweet Adelines, Choraliers, and Swing Mania; sang at Rusty’s and appeared at Centennial Terrace, and elsewhere; and directed her church choir. She said that one of the highlights of her life was “to sing with the fabulous Gene Parker.”
And that is why, Swiatecki said Metzger is so special.
“Flo is the last performer, that I am aware of, who is still singing from the same period when Jon Hendricks and Art Tatum were performing together in Toledo,” Swiatecki said by email. “I doubt she looks at it this way, but from the historical perspective, she is a very special person.”
She’s still active in several musical groups, including the chorus at the Maumee Senior Center and a Sylvania Senior Center band. While she never reached the level of fame Brewer or Hendricks or Tatum, she does something she loves to do: sing.
“I guess I love singing because when I see faces of people that I was singing to, I enjoy seeing the joy that I hope that I’m bringing to them because it brings joy to me to bring joy to them,” Metzger said. “If you can bring some joy into somebody’s life by what you’re doing through music, then you’ve accomplished a great deal.”
The Toledo Opera Association ended the 2023-2024 season with a bang by staging the Broadway musical Ragtime. And when it was over, so was the tenure of its executive director Suzanne Rorick.
She succeeded director Renay Conlin in 2011 and decided to exit stage left. She left a company in pretty good shape financially, true, but her big impact wasn’t in the dollars and cents that opera fans don’t ever think about. It was in the programs she pushed and the artistry that the TOA is known for in the industry, even in a small city like Toledo.
Artists return time and again to perform at the Valentine, and not only the resident artists but big names like Kathryn Lewek and her tenor husband, Zach Borichevsky.
She has not shied away from staging new and somewhat controversial works and has made diversity in opera a priority while bringing the community to opera by sponsoring roundtable discussions and events
Her successors, general manager James Norman and artistic director Kevin Bylsma continue her legacy even while forging their own path.
There were other stories, other columns I’ve enjoyed covering: a trip to Columbus for an outdoors pops concert celebrating the Fourth of July and watching a couple in the audience dance to George Gershwin; discovering the good works of BeInstrumental, an organization that helps find instruments for kids who want to play one; covering the Toledo Ballet’s new Halloween ballet,The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; and following rising soprano Kirsten C. Kunkle as she and composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate unveiled the first Native American opera Loksi’ Shaali’ and look forward to performing at the Kennedy Center.
Onto 2025 and more.
Remember, send me your news of music. I’m eager to tell your stories, too.
Happy New Year.
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