In 2007 our club formed a new scholarship program to benefit the students of our club’s music teachers. We offered these students, whose families needed help to attend a local musical workshop during the summer, a scholarship for the workshop. For our scholarship students attending a local workshop such as Schoolcraft College Piano Camp, Adventures in Chamber Music (strings), or Michigan Opera Theatre’s Gilbert & Sullivan Workshop, we paid full tuition. If the student was attending a residential program like Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, Farmington High School Band Camp, or Interlochen Summer Camp; the student would receive a tuition stipend. During the pandemic when camps were closed, we gave a student a stipend towards buying a professional clarinet. From 2007-2023 we awarded 39 scholarships; $12,480 was the total money spent for the Summer Workshop Program. The Musicale was fortunate to get financial assistance from local businesses to provide scholarship money. Park West Gallery was particularly helpful and often assisted us with 1/3 to 1/2 of the budget for the year’s Summer Scholarship Fund.
Through the years, The Farmington Musicale had members who were active in the MFMC as well as the SE District. Two of our members served as presidents of the MFMC. One member served as State Chairman for American Music. One member served as State Chairman for the Junior Music Festivals for the SE Division. Two members served during different years as State Chairman for National Music Week. One member served as Gold Cup Chairman for several years. One member served as Corresponding Secretary and 3 rd Vice President. Another member served as the MFMC’s chaplain. In our club’s scrapbooks are many certificates for excellence in our programs. We were also affiliated with the Farmington Community Arts Council. The major project of the Arts Council was to have an annual Arts Festival. We participated in this project by having a booth decorated with newspaper articles or pictures of our programs including our Winners Recital. We offered volunteer students and adults performing music during the festivals.
Disappointed with the pianos we were using while offering our free programs to the library and the Longacre House, we started raising money for a better piano at the library. In 1980, after years of fundraising, we donated a $9,000 6-foot grand Yamaha piano to the library. We also helped purchase a piano for the Longacre House which was used there for years. In 2005, our club donated a 1/8 Nagoya Suzuki violin outfit which was used by scholarship students at Costick Center’s music education program.
Year after year, our club gave monthly performances at the library, music companies with pianos. or local churches which were free to the public. We had a Women’s Chorus which performed in these programs and was featured at our Christmas programs. Beginning in the late 1960s through the early 1990s we sent small ensembles to visit people who were shut-ins. In those days ensembles from our chorus would have sing-alongs at hospitals and nursing homes. Our most important outreach was our monthly visits to Northville State Hospital as our contribution to the NFMC’s Music in the Hospitals program. The patients appreciated hearing live music and it brightened their days. Several of our members were honored by the MFMC for their outreach to hospitals and community service. As the years past into the second decade of the 21 Century, we still gave free musical programs to senior groups at Costick Center, a nursing home in Dearborn, and a local church for Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. In addition, one of our pianists continued to give recitals for the elderly. Through the years we received tributes and plaques by our city officials and by the State of Michigan recognizing our club’s accomplishments to the
cultural life of our community