Part one of a three-part series

By Julia Boyle
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

“If you’ve ever performed in anything, you know the high that you get,” says folk musician Lori Goldschmidt.

She laughs and recalls her most recent performance at Seabrook with the Navesink Ensemble, a group of recorder players, including Herb Gissen and Pauline Schoening, who also live at the community.

We sit in the den of her Seabrook home where she stores three sizes of xylophones, a handful of international drums, cymbals, maracas, recorders, and instruments I couldn’t even find on the Internet.

Music has always been a part of her life, and like many of her fellow Seabrook musicians, Goldschmidt has carried it with her throughout every aspect of her life. From teaching to performing to listening, the common thread of music connects these lifetime artists.

Joy of music
Having taught recorder, a woodwind instrument, Goldschmidt was yet unprepared for the one-week event that would change her life. “My children went to a music camp in Canada and learned the Orff approach to music education [developed by German composer Carl Orff in the 1920s and 1930s, it allows the students’ inherent affinities for rhythm and melody to develop naturally through immersion and improvisation instead of through drills and memorization]. I became so intrigued that I studied it, got certified in it, and started teaching it in the late 1950s,” she says.

She’s taught music ever since.
After retiring from The New School of Monmouth County and moving to Seabrook, Goldschmidt went back to her roots and started a recorder class. “It’s going very well. I have seven extremely enthusiastic students, and it’s just been great fun,” she says.

In addition to teaching, the Navesink Ensemble allows Goldschmidt an outlet to perform, one of her greatest joys of music. The ensemble plays at schools, churches, libraries, bookstores, fairs, restaurants, weddings, and Seabrook events.