Clare’s Song

Written by Jack Mizenko as part of Roots of American Music’s “People on the Move” senior songwriting series, a songwriting collaboration between ROAM teaching artists/musicians and senior adults from the Cleveland Heights Senior Center and Library Court Apartments Senior Living. Jack collaborated with Lorretta Roberto, a resident of Library Court Apartments. Lorretta wanted to write a song about her mother, Clare Edith Andreano, who moved to Cleveland’s Little Italy neighborhood, from the mountain village of Rionero Sannitico, Italy, when she was five years old. Loretta recalls how her mother was insistent that her children speak proper English, and instilled in them a love of reading and language, and fostered in them a life long passion for music and the arts. Loretta’s mother and father purchased a set of nesting tables with in-laid wood the last time they visited Italy. The smallest of these tables had a music box in it that played “Torna a Sorrento” (Return to Sorrento). These lyrics are written to this melody.