photograph by jamie harmon
Pedro Maia (violin) and Christina Lai (piano) perform with Otávio Kavakama (cello) for Trezevant Manor residents.
The doors to the music room at Trezevant Manor are typically open as the notes of Pedro Oseias Egeu Maia da Silva’s violin and Christina Lai’s piano escape into the lobby and drift down the hallway. Often, the musicians’ mere presence is like a siren call, with the residents stopping by to enjoy an intimate, impromptu concert by the ever-smiling newlywed duo. On a recent day, when the two sat for an interview with Memphis Magazine, there was no concert in the music room, but residents who passed by took a moment to say hi, happy as ever to see the couple who moved into one of Trezevant’s apartments back in August 2022. It’s clear they’re quite popular here.
But Maia and Lai, being in their early 30s, aren’t the typical demographic for Trezevant residents. Instead, they occupy a category outside of the retirement community’s offerings of independent living, assisted living, and memory care: They are a part of the new artist-in-residence program, which was born from a partnership between Trezevant and Iris Collective, as the two organizations emerged from the effects of the pandemic with a renewed sense of purpose.
For Iris, the period following the height of the pandemic marked a transition from the Iris Orchestra to the Iris Collective. Due to financial and operational difficulties spurred by Covid, Iris initially announced in December 2021 that they would suspend operations at the end of their 2021-22 season. The decision was difficult, but the support for the orchestra, which brought musicians from around the world to the Memphis area for over 20 years, overflowed and gave Iris leaders a new hope.
photograph by ziggy mack for the iris collective
Maia and Lai, who married in January, have enjoyed rehearsing and performing together at Trezevant and throughout Memphis. “It’s really fun to play with him,” she says. “We listen to music similarly and that helps a lot.”
“Staff, musicians, community members, myself included — they said, ‘We think that Memphis is a better place because Iris is here,’” says Rebecca Arendt, Iris’ former director of community initiatives and current executive director. “Instead of moving down the path we’re currently on and shutting down, we can pivot. And so with the aid of Mary Jian, who’s our artistic and strategic advisor, along with community members and other Iris musicians, we put together a proposal for a shift to an artist-collective model.”
The board accepted their proposal in the spring of 2022, effectively saving the orchestra. In the new model, implemented this past September, collaboration and community are at the forefront of the nonprofit. “All of our programming is rooted in the idea of creating art with community,” Arendt explains. “We look for ways to make music participatory and interactive. Being in the community is what fuels what we do on the stage. Not the other way around. So if we’re not in the community, there’s no way for us to have relevance.”
To this point, Arendt turned to Joan Chesney, founder and former director of the pediatric fellowship office at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Chesney and her late husband, Russell, had helped Iris bring music to St. Jude and Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital for patients and their families — a partnership that continues today. Now, Chesney resides at Trezevant, and in her conversations with Arendt about finding new ways for Iris to engage with the community, the subject of the Iris Artist Fellowship, which attracts artists from throughout the world, came up. “She asked where we housed them,” Arendt says. “We were talking about the struggles of finding apartments in Memphis for temporary housing and that was how the relationship [between Trezevant and Iris] began.”
“We look for ways to make music participatory and interactive. Being in the community is what fuels what we do on the stage. Not the other way around. So if we’re not in the community, there’s no way for us to have relevance.” — Rebecca Arendt, Iris’ executive director
Like Iris, Trezevant was looking for innovative ways to engage its residents in the arts and the community at large. After all, research shows that music and arts experiences promote cognitive vitality and improve quality of life. “We have so many residents here that have been involved in nonprofits and have been supporters of the arts that we wanted to think outside the box [of how to keep the arts in their lives],” says Libby King, Trezevant’s director of marketing and sales. Housing the Iris fellows seemed like the perfect fit. “Just the stimulation and having some younger folks in here and interacting and learning from them has been great for our residents — and vice versa.”
Arendt adds, “I would say that there’s always been a strong connection between seniors in every community and classical music. They tend to be one of our largest patron groups. But besides that, the truth is, as we get older, mobility and accessibility become issues for us. It’s not as easy to get out and do things, so being able to engage musically here is part of the work that we’re doing to keep the arts accessible to all of us.
“It’s really been mutually beneficial,” she continues. “Not only have the fellows been able to provide consistent music engagement for the residents, but the fellows have gotten an immediate fan club with people that are interested in hearing about them and their lives. And so it’s given them a sense of community that sometimes can take a long time to build.”
Our fellowship is a diversity-initiative fellowship,” Arendt explains. “So it is designed to address the underrepresentation of Black and Latinx musicians in classical music. We think particularly in Memphis that’s such an important thing to show — that classical music is for everybody — since we are a minority-majority city.” The fellows perform in all Iris concerts and contribute to Iris’ community initiatives — all the while growing their own artistry.
Maia’s love for classical music began in his home country of Brazil. “I started [playing music] because, I think, my mom had always loved music and she wanted to be a musician, but life didn’t let her,” he says. “So she just asked me if I wanted to study music and I said yes.”
Since that fateful “yes,” Maia has played violin at some of the world’s most prestigious venues, like Weill Hall at Carnegie, Sala São Paulo, and Seoul National Theater. “It’s been a great ride,” he says. “I’ve always loved it. And being able to travel, which I love, was a big part of the decision [to pursue music professionally]. That’s how I came here. That’s how I have been everywhere.”
After applying for the Iris fellowship at the encouragement of his professor at Florida State University, who played with the Memphis orchestra for 20 years, Maia first came to Memphis for Iris’ 2021-2022 season. During that time, he and Lai, who met at Florida State, maintained a long-distance relationship, with her working in Kentucky. But when Maia renewed his fellowship for Iris’ current season — the first season the fellows would be housed at Trezevant — Lai decided to join him in Memphis. Though she’s not an Iris fellow, Trezevant happily welcomed her and their dog, Mocha, into the brand-new artist-in-residence program.
The residents welcomed them just as heartily. “All of them are so nice,” says Maia. “It’s like you can’t walk by without them saying, ‘Oh, we really appreciate you. We love you.’”
Indeed, the couple has grown close with members of the retirement community. They eat in the dining hall, and they attend floor parties. Lai has taken up painting with a resident, and Maia has begun playing tennis with a group of men at Trezevant. A group of residents even hosted a toast in the couple’s honor before they married in January.
“They gave us so much advice,” Lai says of the get-together, to which Maia adds, “It was like a movie. They gathered around in a circle, and each one of them gave us advice. ‘Oh, we have been married for 50, 70 years and this and that.’ It was very sweet. Some were pretty funny, but it was very sweet.”
photograph by jamie harmon
In addition to the Iris Collective, Trezevant Manor invites other local groups, like the Memphis Symphony Orchestra pictured here, to perform for residents.
And of course, the couple — along with Otávio Kavakama, a fellow Iris musician-in-residence — perform for the residents in concerts and open rehearsals. “We ask what they like to listen to,” Lai says. “and we cater the music to them. Because of that, they always come to our concerts. We have a really good retention rate.”
“It’s funny — we also try to challenge them with what they’re used to listening to,” Maia adds. “One concert, we performed this Russian composer and the music is very crazy, very noisy, and we asked them what they thought, and one of the residents was like, ‘I hate it.’ But we wanted an honest opinion, but then some other people were blown away by it.”
“We ask what they like to listen to, and we cater the music to them. Because of that, they always come to our concerts. We have a really good retention rate.” — Christina Lai
The musicians also play for the memory unit. “Music can be helpful to people who are, depending on their condition, losing their memory,” Maia says, “so we try to play things that are familiar to them from their heritage, from their past. And you can see something we play trigger their memory.”
Overall, the couple agrees that getting to know the Trezevant community has made their performances in Memphis more meaningful. “It creates a responsibility,” Maia says. “It’s like, ‘Oh, I know these people. We like them; they like us. We want to present something nice.’
photograph by bob bayne
Last fall, Trezevant hosted its first Gala for the Arts, a resident-led initiative that invited local performing and visual arts groups for a night of celebration.
“Because of what this fellowship is,” Maia continues, “it’s very important for us to be inserted in the community, and I can’t think of another way that could be more effective in that way — to be inside Memphis and have neighbors and dine with people from here. If we were living in an apartment or a house somewhere, renting, it would never be the same. I would have my friends and just be with them, and not really get to know the community on a one-on-one level. They know so much about the history of Memphis, about everything in Memphis. They’re always telling us stories about themselves and of course about the city, so it creates a different kind of bond than if I were just living here and working in the city.”
Beyond the personal bonds they’ve established, having their housing taken care of through the program has also enriched their stay in Memphis. “This opportunity really allows musicians to be unburdened and to study what they really want because we don’t have to worry about housing,” Lai says. “We got this opportunity to work on music that we didn’t think we had time for. Like, we had this plan to learn all the Beethoven violin sonatas, and I don’t think we would’ve done it without this opportunity.”
After all, music, for both Lai and Maia, means more than their career; it’s a ministry and an integral part of their identity. When asked why she has pursued piano professionally, Lai admits that while in college, she debated between majoring in music or chemistry, but, she says, “I decided that it should be music because I thought it had challenged me differently, to face my fears really. It sounds clichéd, but it makes you think about who you are and what you are afraid of, and your ego and your self-worth and all these things. So I thought music would be something that challenged me the rest of my life … and I really do not regret choosing it.”
Since this epiphany, Lai, similar to Iris’ mission, has sought to share this passion for music to all, and now she serves as director of operations and programming of PRIZM Ensemble, a local nonprofit geared towards creating an inclusive space for youth through chamber music education, youth development, and performance. “I think music education is so important and access to it is important,” she says. “Not everyone has equal access and equitable access.”
Since starting the artist-in-residence program, Trezevant has opened its doors to artists from Opera Memphis and the Memphis Symphony Orchestra for temporary stays, with plans to continue the partnership with Iris. And arts experiences continue to be added to Trezevant’s calendar every month, from salsa lessons to documentary screenings.
Maia and Lai, for their part, try to attend events when they can, and Maia and Otávio Kavakama, the other Iris musician-in-residence, also from Brazil, even contributed to Trezevant’s Brazil-themed month this spring by playing Brazilian music on his cello and pulling up their houses on Google Earth for the residents to learn about their native culture. Maia and Kavakama will also bring Brazilian culture to Memphis as a whole with Iris Collective’s Brazil by Day and Brazil by Night celebrations in May, presented in conjunction with the Collage Dance Collective.
For now, though, Maia and Lai are unsure what their next steps will be after Maia’s fellowship ends in May, but they can definitely say that the residents at Trezevant Manor will always hold a place in their heart. “We’re a really special community,” Lai says. “It’s been amazing.”
