Creators, Makers, & Doers: Karen Mang Kennedy
Posted on 12/20/24 by Brooke Burton
Interview & Photography by Brooke Burton for Boise City Department of Arts & History
Musicians Pictured: Stephen Mathie, Katherine Jarvis, Geoffrey Hill, Lindsay Bohl
Karen Mang Kennedy of Idaho Concerts in Care, brings music to residents living in assisted living and care homes for the elderly, a special connection fostered by her mother. But the music is much more than a concert, it’s a high-level performance from professional musicians sharing their art; there’s a magic that happens that she calls an exchange of positive energy. We had the privilege to witness this at a concert for residents of an Idaho Veterans Home in Boise. Karen shares with us the surprising path that led her here (she was a Canadian Mountie!) and the lessons learned from a childhood sharing her musical talents in church. Most importantly, Karen speaks of her newfound understanding on how to embrace the joy of self-expression using her musical gift and skill. And we are so proud!
So, we are looking at a photo of your trio, back in Canada?
Yeah, that’s me singing “O Canada” at the Vancouver Marathon when I was a Mountie.
You immigrated to the United States?
I came in 2019, in May, and then got married in August of 2019. So I’ve been here, you know, five and a half years full time. I met Craig in the Sawtooth Mountains backpacking and we got married in August of ’19. I just got my U.S. citizenship on September 6th.
What was that process like?
It was actually pretty smooth for me. I realize there are a lot of people out there waiting a very long time. I was very fortunate, other than being a little expensive, it’s just a lot of paperwork, a lot of duplications, a lot of photocopying. I had my first‑time voting in November, so that’s pretty cool.
Congratulations! Did you have to give up your Canadian citizenship or are you dual?
I have dual citizenship.
If you had to give up your Canadian citizenship, would you?
No, I wouldn’t. I just don’t—it wouldn’t be right.
Where did you grow up in Canada?
In Saskatchewan, on an acreage. Out in the country.
Did you ever imagine you would end up living in the United States?
No. I sometimes just think about where I came from and where I am now, it’s been a bit of a journey. I’d only been in the United States a handful of times as a kid. I moved from Saskatchewan to Victoria, British Columbia, to go to school and do a degree in music, in clarinet performance. I mean, it’s not extremely useful unless you’re going to play in an orchestra or start a chamber music series, which is what I really wanted to do.
I was living in Victoria and freelancing and singing. Then my sister sent me a clipping from the Montreal Gazette, an ad for musicians for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Band. They had a community policing arm that went out into the community to play concerts. In fact, they had a small band that played internationally—they played all over the world. It was a five‑piece jazz combo. So I applied for that and I won the audition and was on my way across the country to Ottawa to play my clarinet for a living. And then they cut the band in half.
Oh, no! Was it over for you?
Yeah, it was like a dream come true, then suddenly, “What is happening right now?”
Your plans to play in the national band ended right there?
Yeah. I had already gone through the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] training. RCMP is the national police force. So, I ended up in the RCMP for thirteen years.
You’d completed officer training because it was required to be in the band?
Yes, they started doing that, I think in 1989 because, like, what happens if we have a national emergency? There are all these people in the band who are Mounties, that’s what we’re called, but they’re not trained. So they said, we need to train everybody in case there is an emergency or there is an opportunity to serve in another fashion rather than playing instruments.
Suddenly you were an officer?
Yeah, I was a regular cop, if you want to put it that way. So, general duty; four‑day shifts; two days, two nights, four days off, go to all kinds of calls. Those are hard things to do. But when you’re young, you know, it’s not as hard. It took a toll on me for sure, doing twelve‑hour shifts.
That’s quite the change in career paths!
I’ve got a lot of friends who said the same thing when they knew me in university. It’s like, what are you talking about? But I just felt at the time I didn’t really have a choice. I didn’t want to go back to Victoria and I didn’t really know what I was going to do.
Here’s the thing. When I got the phone call that the band had been cut in half, it was the day before I signed on to be an officer. And I just said, “Can I have a week to think about it?” No, because all the troops, as they’re called, are lined up six months in advance, so I couldn’t take a week to think about it. I had to make a decision very quickly. And I said, I guess I’m going to do this. At the time they said, give it a couple of years, you know, someone [in the band] is going to retire.
And when someone in the band retires, you can get the opening?
Yeah, and play my clarinet for a living in Ottawa. Six months later, they completely canned the program altogether. So everyone in the band retired or went on to guard postings or something. I got posted to North Vancouver, which was a great place to be a recruit; there were quite a variety of files and cases. I ended up in the traffic section and was a hit‑and‑run investigator. Then I went on to work in internal affairs. I worked for admin services, then I worked for community policing in Surrey, British Columbia.
Which of those did you enjoy most?
The hit‑and‑run investigator; in British Columbia half your car insurance is required and issued by the government of British Columbia. So there was a claim center, people would come in saying, “Oh, I think I had a hit‑and‑run,” when in fact, they didn’t have a hit‑and‑run.
Sneaky!
There were so many fakes that they ended up stationing officers in the claim centers. And not just Mounties, Vancouver City police—all the police agencies around the Lower Mainland in British Columbia posted an officer there to cut down on the number of frauds.
Is that because people felt less comfortable lying if there was an officer on duty right there on site?
That’s absolutely right.
People came in with a plan to tell a fib in order to get insurance money?
They’d have people come in the door, see the police officer and drive right out the other end. So funny. I didn’t charge a lot of people there, but we certainly cut down on the number of hit‑and‑run claims. I had a blast with those people. It was nice to work with people other than police officers, because, you know, officers are a certain type of person, and I didn’t necessarily fit in. Claims adjusters were funny.
When you said there’s a certain type of person that’s attracted to the role of being an officer, what is that type?
I think they’re very driven, very goal‑oriented. And they probably had the idea since they were a kid, like my friend Heidi. She wanted to be a police officer since she was five years old.
But I found that once you got off the road, off the general duty, and into sections that handle things like fraud, break‑and‑enters, or more serious crimes, the people were more curious and open‑minded. When I did my fraud rotations, I thought I was on the set of Barney Miller.
That does sound fun!
They had this interesting camaraderie and had to be really curious about human motivations.
But to go from freelancing in music and being self-directed, to this environment with very strict rules?
It’s not self‑directed at all. The discipline was external. I did learn to discipline myself in terms of physical fitness. I always loved that kind of stuff, anyway. It was very physically demanding, but I never thought about quitting. It was just really tough. But tough was good. The twelve-hour shifts were the worst part. I’m really glad that it’s in my past, because I could not—it just wouldn’t interest me to do it now.
What interests you now?
I really feel glad about getting back into the arts, and Concerts in Care, which is mostly a labor of love; arranging musicians to go and positively affect the lives of people in care who cannot get out. It’s really fulfilling. Also, gardening and singing. My voice has really changed, I’m getting into proper function of my voice, and it’s very gratifying.
That’s where we started, you singing, with the trio.
The picture that you saw was the original three we got together to do a few care home gigs. This model for Idaho Concerts in Care started in British Columbia in 2006, so it’s been operating for a long time, then it gradually spread across the whole country. And we thought, “We’ve got something kind of special here, so let’s formalize ourselves and call ourselves Kallisto Trio,” and we started doing gigs for the care homes in British Columbia.
You were getting paid? Through the program?
Yes, paid quite well. We did some touring. I played a little clarinet, but, honestly, it’s harder to keep up a clarinet once you’ve stopped playing. It’s not enough to get your chops back to play well; you’ve got to practice a lot. So I did a little bit of playing, but mostly singing with the trio and with the Vancouver Chamber Choir.
What inspired you to earn your degree in music?
Well, I was good at music. Music ran in the family. Mom’s very musical. She’s a church musician. I was also a church musician. There’s seven of us in the family, and they all played an instrument, sort of before my time because I’m at the end. I really wanted to study further. An education degree might have been useful, but I just wanted to play more. Having a performance degree afforded me a couple of lessons a week and normally you would only get one. I was interested in really playing well. I did play well for a long time.
You’ve been a performer, and now you are finding performers to bring music to the people who are living in assisted living. Is it common to have live music in assisted living?
There are a lot of people doing really good work volunteering their services to go in and play. I feel like what we do is different because the music is of a different caliber. The level of competency is something that allows people to go to a concert and relax into it.
The fact that these are working musicians giving their art to [the residents] helps them connect with memories; it helps them connect with each other. I was at a workshop with Barb Minton a year ago in September, and we talked about how the brain is affected by music and just how many areas of the brain are affected, something like thirteen. They put on a neuro cap, with electrodes attached, and they’re hooked up to music. We watched the brain light up. The first time I saw it, I was weeping, it was so beautiful to watch all this color representative of what is going on [in the brain].
When I see the memory care residents snapping their fingers or tapping their toes or clapping along or even conducting—I have seen people conducting—or humming, their brains are being stimulated.
People tell us all kinds of stories about what the music means to them. Usually it’s like, “I played piano when I was younger,” or “I remembered that song from when I was growing up.” The biggest difference for us, without a doubt, is that at every concert, there is always a connection between the musicians and audience. Connection during the music; you can feel what people are feeling, and afterwards they talk and share stories.
I feel that would be normal for any one of us who lives independently, and so why shouldn’t it be normal for [residents].
To be independent and have the agency to seek out that kind of interaction or stimulation? If you’re in assisted living, you’re not able to leave easily, you have less agency and opportunity.
And opportunity, that’s right. If you go to The Terraces, it’s a wonderful independent living facility; they have all levels of care. People can still get out because they’re in a place where they can get the bus. But there are many who can only get from their room to dinner and back. Getting out is really difficult.
During a concert, I have seen people really, really light up, and afterwards they’re full of all kinds of things. People say “I just haven’t heard anything like that,” or “I haven’t heard that since I went to the philharmonic.” It helps them connect with parts of themselves that they haven’t connected with for a long time. These are the moments of joy I’m feeling. I’m sure other people are feeling it. Even if they’re closing their eyes—I’m always looking for something I can use as a metric—it’s very difficult to measure what we’re seeing, so anytime I see someone closing their eyes or really listening, or, I’ll see tears. One time, a guy was humming through the whole concert—Vivaldi, Mozart, Gershwin—and he was right on.
Afterwards, I found out he has dementia, and his wife said that he plays the bagpipe but could only manage the chanter, because it takes a lot of physical hutzpah to play the chanter and the bags. I think how amazing it is that music can touch him in a way and allow his brain to function, that he can hum accurately and right on pitch. It was lovely to witness that. It’s good to remember where the joy comes from. That’s definitely one place it comes from, being with elder people. I’ve always had an affinity with older people.
How did you learn that about yourself?
It’s thanks to my mom. I went along to Thursday night choir practices as a child, then later accompanied the choir. I was always in the company of older people—some of them were my mom’s friends, but they were the members of my Lutheran Church, and I felt special with them because they all cared for me, and I cared for them. When I was five or six, my mom taught me, phonetically, German Christmas carols. We would go to the Lutheran home and sing Christmas carols. I learned that act of service from a very early age. The Lutheran Church impressed upon me the importance of community.
You’re drawn especially to serving the elderly who cannot do the things for themselves that they would choose to if they could?
I really am. I think older people are so special. It’s a lifetime of memory and experience.
Where do you find your joy in music? Something that thrills you?
It’s interesting you ask, because I think with Critical Mass Vocal Artists—we just did a concert of the Faure—Gabriel Faure Requiem; it’s completely thrilling to sing. I did a little solo of Debussy, that was thrilling. I’m especially thrilled lately because for ten years I’ve been studying functional voice with someone in the Province of Ontario, in Canada.
And you can do it virtually now!
Yeah, I’m very grateful for that, to have the skill to express things with a healthy instrument. I’ve been singing a lot, but not understanding exactly what’s happening functionally. Now, I find that my opportunity for self‑expression is better because I have the skills to do it. When you’re young, you have a lot of human growth hormone. Your body will recover from singing or different activities, like, overnight. And then you get older and you have to be more careful about what you do and how you do it. That includes the voice, because muscles control the vocal folds, and they need a blood supply just like any other muscle.
Like you said, the body is an instrument, like the piano, using it properly and knowing how it works is very important. What kind of feedback do you get from the musicians who perform for Idaho Concerts in Care?
For some of them it seems like a good gig. And for other people it’s a labor of love. There are a few people who really enjoy connecting with people in this way, especially afterwards, they like to talk, hear stories. They all get paid very well. I wanted to make sure that they’re fairly compensated.
Concerts in Care started in 2021?
We started with a donor box campaign while we were waiting for [non-profit] status, so we raised enough to do six concerts through April 2022, and we received status in February of 2022. Then we received an Arts & History Grant and private donations, and just kind of kept going.
There are many arts programs that are funded to go into elementary schools. Concerts in Care is at the other book-end of life. Do you feel care homes are underserved that way?
I definitely feel it’s underserved. The budgets for, let’s say, entertainment or the social aspects are very small.
Those who are giving grants see the value in paying the musicians to regularly do these concerts.
Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a $100,000 budget and have concerts in more than one location every month? That would be the dream.
What’s your schedule like right now?
The grants afford us about 15 concerts in Boise a year. There are 53 care homes in Boise.
I see.
Over the last three years we’ve done 54 concerts and reached about 730 people in about 34 care homes.
That’s something to be very proud of.
We’re getting there. I really like doing it, it’s lovely.
Do you feel like you’ve come full circle?
Yeah, I feel like this aspect of service through music has come full circle, because of what my mom taught me as a little kid, singing German carols and about how they were received. It was beautiful, even as a five‑ or six‑year‑old, to realize how meaningful it was for people to hear Christmas carols in their own language.
Later, as I got older, my mom and I would play piano and organ duets in church, and I would play clarinet recitals for people in the care home, and it was a good opportunity for me to try out repertoire and they just loved it.
I don’t know if it dawned on me when I was singing with my trio Kallisto, but really it was sort of meant to be, that I would find myself naturally back to this way of connecting with people. I am really looking forward to singing these two concerts with my friends, coming up.
If your mom could see you now what would she say?
She passed in 2007, but I think she would be pretty happy. But, growing up in the Lutheran church, there was something called Jantelagen.
Jantelagen.
My understanding of it is that within certain Scandinavian societies, it’s a feeling, or an agreement, that everyone is sort of on the same level, there’s no one standing out. Not in a bad way, but that everyone is elevated. Or the idea is to elevate everyone, so everyone is operating at a relatively high level. There’s not really, like, a lot of competition. Our friends went to Finland, and they said there were no bumper stickers, you know, that say this, these are my ideas, this, this, this, this, this. There’s no separation. It’s like—
It’s something about individuality and pride, but somehow pride is looked down upon?
Yes. And so that speaks to what my early musical education was like, which was a lot in the church. I got a lot of experience performing, but it was—you could never really talk about how, you know, if it was good or not.
The question “Did I do well?” The kind of affirmation that’s really important to a child?
“Did I do well.” I don’t even know if I ever asked my mom that.
Or to be complimented on your performance?
I’d feel very uncomfortable.
You would have been uncomfortable with that praise or affirmation of your musical talent?
Right. I guess I basically just had to assume my mother thought it was good. It’s so hard to describe it, but it’s definitely more of a performative thing. Today, I want to do well as an expression of myself, so that I can feel joy in what I’m doing.
Some of my joy is in helping other people find their joy, it gets transmuted to them [through the music] so they feel a bunch of wonderful things about their own lives. I mean who doesn’t do that? You’re hearing a song, and you start thinking about a particular time of your life, and you feel all these things come up; joy or sadness, or you feel giddy or whatever. It’s a vehicle for people to connect to themselves.
That’s how I’m looking at making music now. It’s a vehicle for my self‑expression, because I have no control over what someone else is feeling or thinking; it’s for me. In a way, it’s a better way to express myself, because when you’re connecting with yourself I think you automatically have a better connection with other people.
I think so too.
My mom would come to university and hear all my concerts and I assumed she enjoyed all of them, but I wasn’t really ever sure, because, she never really said “Oh, I’m really proud of you.” I had to assume my mother was proud of me.
Those kinds of positive affirmations weren’t part of her culture?
Yes. And I feel that it is so important to give that feedback, to connect it back to “How did I feel about what I was doing?”
To reflect ‘you’ back to yourself. It’s mirroring, I think.
Yes. It would have been handy to have some mirroring. You know, now, just this weekend, we sang the Faure Requiem with Critical Mass. And during hosannas when the men were singing, I was just like—I was vibrating because it was so beautiful and so expressive. I’m feeling pretty good about that of late. It’s an interesting place to come from. As you say, in a religious household where it’s more of a duty and a responsibility—music is just part of a life that is almost matter of fact.
Now, my goal is to enjoy it.
And being able to take pride in the skill you’ve developed and feel positive affirmation for yourself?
Yes. Because what better vibe is there than when—you know, it’s unspoken and sometimes very hard to put into words, but it’s an exchange of energy. And that’s what I feel happens at the concerts; there really is an exchange of positive energy, and it moves me. At the last concert, they played Vivaldi Winter; it was very raw—it wasn’t perfect—but it was really raw. And it’s just like [takes deep breath in] I’m still feeling it. So it lives on in me.
North End
December 20, 2024
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Creators, Makers, & Doers highlights the lives and work of Boise artists and creative individuals. Selected profiles focus on individuals whose work has been supported by the Boise City Dept. of Arts & History. The views are those of the individuals.