The Presbyterian Community Church of the Rockies was filled with people and music Sunday afternoon for a concert in honor of Black History Month that was also a fundraiser for the soon-to-open Estes Dementia Day Center.
Organized by Nelson Burke, the “Let Me Listen” concert was the second annual concert focusing on music honoring the African Tradition in American music.
Choral and solo performances featured the Estes Valley Chamber Singers, Simpatica, the Tranquil Valley Gospel Singers, the Estes Park Chorale, the Nada Quartet, soloists Valerie Dascoli, Patricia Arias, pianists John Wolf, Michael Brown, Michelle Gergen-Wisner, and Oscar Peterson, guitarist and drummer Gary Hall, soloist Valerie Dascoli, and directors Rich Dixon, Denise Stooksesberry, and sound engineer Randy Welch.
The 18 musical selections included gospel, jazz, blues, and folk music which all trace their roots to the musical traditions brought to America by enslaved Africans and preserved through generations.
Spirituals evolved from African songs of work, worship, and resistance, blending messages of faith with harmony and rhythm. The blues emerged from field hollers and work songs, expressing hardship and resilience through bent notes and storytelling, and jazz grew from the same soil, adding rhythmic complexity and improvisation into a new art form.
American folk music absorbed African patterns of narrative, melody, and communal expression, weaving them into the heartbeat of American culture.
“Bring me little water,” a folk song attributed to and arranged by “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, a folk and blues musician, was performed by Simpatica. Lead Belly’s aunt’s name was Sylvie. The song, which dates to the 1940s, was based on his memories of his uncle, Bob, hollering at Sylvie to bring him water while he was plowing.
Patricia Arias sang “Corcovado,” a bossa nova song and jazz standard written by Antônio Carlos Jobim in 1960. Also known as “Quiet Nights of Stars,” named after the famous mountain in Rio de Janeiro, the song blends jazz with samba, a Brazilian music genre rooted in percussion and Afro-Brazilian culture.
“Let Me Listen,” a song by composer Dan Forrest with text by Charles Anthony Silestri, gave the concert its name. The choral piece was commissioned by Staley High School in Kansas City and premiered during the school’s 2023 Civil Rights Tour. It addresses themes of empathy, allyship, and truly hearing the experiences of others, particularly people of color.
The 90-minute concert ended with an invitation for audience members to join in singing “Lift Every Voice And Sing,” a song by J. Rosamond Johnson from the Presbyterian Hymnal, often referred to as the “African-American National Anthem.”
The Estes Dementia Day Center to open soon
After three weeks on the job, Debbie Unruh, the new executive director of the EDDC, thanked the community for their support and told the audience of the urgent need for dementia care today, as one in 10 adults over 60 will experience some form of cognitive decline.
In a community of almost 12,000 people, with approximately 40 percent of individuals aged 60 or older, the need for dementia care for individuals and support for their family members and caretakers is huge, said Unruh.
Information from the National Institutes of Health about dementia is sobering. According to a 2025 study, American adults over age 55 have a 42% lifetime risk of developing dementia. The risk of developing dementia increases with age, and 1 in 3 people aged 85 and older will deal with the disease.
With more than $480,000 raised in just under 2 years, Unruh said the EDDC is close to ringing the bell on reaching its $500,000 goal.
Pete Sinnott, a founding board member of the EDDC, told the audience of more than 150 people on Sunday afternoon of the challenges and the toll of taking his wife to a dementia day program in Fort Collins, which is more than an hour from Estes. His experience led him to gather others and form the 501(c)(3) organization for the community.
The community-based adult dementia day program will be located at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church. Click here for information about the program. Click here to make a contribution.
Last year’s concert
Last year’s concert raised more than $9,000 for the Estes Park Salud Foundation, which supports the Estes Park Salud Family Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center.
The local clinic, which provides primary medical and dental care to more than 1,800 people in the Estes Valley, has faced financial challenges in keeping its doors open.
Since the 2020 pandemic, health care costs have risen due to a variety of factors, including increased utilization, higher medical and drug prices that have outpaced GDP growth, and the expiration of pandemic-era subsidies.
Funding appropriation for the nation’s 1,512 community health centers – which serve more than 52 million people nationwide, or 1 in every 7 Americans and 1 in 3 living in rural areas – has faced nail-biting, eleventh-hour political uncertainties.
The 2026 Consolidated Appropriations Act, passed by Congress on Feb. 3, increases health center funding to $4.6 billion for fiscal year 2026; however, the appropriation only extends funding through December 2026, including the Community Health Center Fund, which was designed to provide stable, longer-term funding for primary clinics such as Salud.
Primary and preventive care provided in an outpatient clinic, which accounts for only 1% of total U.S. health care spending, is less expensive than acute, emergency care provided in an urgent care or emergency room or inpatient bed.
The majority of people who receive care at safety-net primary care clinics are low-income or uninsured. If lower-cost care is unfunded, the consequence can increase the costs of acute and long-term care.
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