Chopin Academy and Poems about Music at Modjeska Historic House and Gardens

Maja Trochimczyk with actress Ewa Boryczko as Modjeska in Arden, 2011

Arden - the Helena Modjeska Historic House and Gardens in Silverado Canyon area of Orange County is a second national Historic Monument in the county. It is a former residence of Polish actress, Shakespearean star, director, producer, as well as costume designer, writer, and artist, Helena Modrzejewska (1840-1909), the first world-famous celebrity and theatre star of California.  As President of Helena Modjeska Arts and Culture Club for nearly 10 years, I frequently visited the beautiful site, brought the Club members and Polish guests there. I  collaborated with the Helena Modjeska Foundation that supports the site with docents giving tours, gardeners planting and weeding, and fundraising to fix and enrich the holdings of the historic home.  The photo above shows me with Polish actress Ewa Boryczko whose stroll through the gardens in a replica of one of Modjeska's costumes was recorded by Polish TV and repeatedly broadcast in Poland whenever Modjeska was mentioned... 

Helena Modjeska Foundation's docent Pamela Harrell, member of Orange County Historic Commission, in period costume conducted tours of the interior of Arden. 25 April 2026

Maja Trochimczyk with Dorota Plazewski from the Board of the Helena Modjeska Foundation.

Maja Trochimczyk with Rob Brown of the Modjeska Foundation, docent at Arden,  and lecturer about Modjeska and local history.

While the volunteers from the Modjeska Foundation help furnish and care for the site, it is actually owned by Orange County and managed by Historic Curators of OC Parks. Since the fall of 2023, I have collaborated with the Historic Curators, then Mr. Bradley Flynt, now Ms. Katie McKay or Orange County Parks Department, by bringing in exhibition materials - books about Modjeska, including her 1910 memoirs and organizing a variety of displays. I also distributed free copies of my brief Modjeska's biography, small American and Polish flags, and even Polish candy. In addition, I coordinated performances at Arden by Polish folk dance group Krakusy in 2024 and by young musicians from the Chopin Academy performing Chopin and Polish composers under the live oaks of the garden. I wrote a richly illustrated report from two of these visits on the Modjeska Club blog: 

https://modjeskaclub.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-wonders-of-arden-helena-modjeska.html

A Modjeska Mini-Biography by Maja Trochimczyk, distributed at Arden - the first Chapter of Trochimczyk's book Celebrating Modjeska in California. 

https://www.moonrisepress.com/celebrating-modjeska---trochimczyk.html

The fountain was thoroughly restored in 2016, with funds raised by the Modjeska Foundation.

Presenting Modjeska books to Historic Curator Bradley Flynt, October 2024.

Krakusy dance in Arden, 12 October 2024. In regional costumes from the Lublin area.

This spring, the young musicians, taught by Roza Yoder along with her husband Douglas Yoder, appeared at Arden for the third time, following concerts given in October 2024 and October 2025.  In the past, the musicians played in-between appearances by Polish folk dancers from local dance groups, Krakusy in 2024 and Polanki in 2025.  The concerts started from the youngest performers, age 4 to 7, featured teenagers in the middle and ended with college-age star musicians. The first concert was organized by Curator Bradley Flynt who moved to another position within the OC Parks system, while Curator Katie McKay continued the collaborations with Polish Americans highlighting students of international backgrounds.  

Historic Curator Katie McKay welcomes the guests to Arden and introduces the performance, 25 April 2026.

Roza Yoder of the Chopin Academy with Maja Trochimczyk and students Bailey and Avery Tang, Angela Zhou, /sophia Xia, Ivanna Yang, and Adrien Ramos at the Modjeska's garden, Arden, named after Shakespeare's Forest of Arden.

Adrien Ramos, USC Viterbi School of Engineering, played J.S. Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, and Franz Liszt.

Amelia Shirakian payed pieces by Fryderyk Chopin and Janina Garscia.

Mira Lei played music by Fryderyk Chopin and Witold Lutoslawski

Dominik Yoder finished the concert with virtuosic renditions of Beethoven and Chopin, ending the performance with his own piece.

Roza Yoder and Maja Trochimczyk with the youngest musicians, Bailley and Avery Tang.

It is such a great joy to hear youth play classical music in a site brimming with history and beauty.  The ancient live oaks, sago palms, redwoods (pockmarked by woodpeckers that also "attack" the buildings needing frequent repairs) provided a magical background to the sounds of Chopin, Bach, Beethoven, Paderewski and Liszt.  These sounds could have been heard in Arden in the 1880s when Paderewski visited his mentor and friend and played for her guests... 

Again, all talented performers received gift bags with small gifts, poetry postcards, books, notebooks, markers, and toys - different sets depending on their age, courtesy of my Moonrise Press. The older pianists, Adrian Ramos and Dominik Yoder, received copies of my newest book about Paderewski with a collection of  my essays and over 50 poems about the great pianist and Modjeska's friend, written between 1890 and 1940 and found in Polish archives.  The younger pianists  got cards with a Paderewski poem from that book in their gift bags with notebooks, markers and toys.

https://www.moonrisepress.com/paderewski-essays--poems.html

Who was Ignacy Jan Paderewski and what was his connection to Helena Modjeska?  This pianist, composer, statesman, Poland's Prime Minister and an architect of its regained independence, as well as community organizer and a philanthropist (1860-1941). He was 20 years younger than the actress and was her most famous protege in his youth, and a fervent supporter when she was ready to retire.  She organized a fundraiser for his studies in Vienna  and he "paid it back" by organizing a fundraiser for her retirement thirty years later. She also helped create his stage image as an "archangel," connected him to her friends in London (painters Edward Burne-Jones that created his most influential angelic image and Lawrence Alma-Tadema), and in New York (poet Richard Watson Gilder who wrote a mystical poem "How Paderewski Plays" used in his concert program across the U.S. since 1891). 

How Paderewski Plays 

 

I.

If words were perfume, color, wild desire; 
If poet's song were fire 
That burned to blood in purple-pulsing veins; 
If with a bird-like trill the moments throbbed to hours; 
If summer's rains 
Turned drop by drop to shy, sweet, maiden flowers; 
If God made flowers with light and music in them, 
And saddened hearts could win them; 
If loosened petals touched the ground 
With a caressing sound; 
If love's eyes uttered word 
No listening lover e'er before had heard; 
If silent thoughts spake with a bugle's voice; 
If flame passed into song and cried, "Rejoice, rejoice!" 
If words could picture life's hopes, heaven's eclipse 
When the last kiss has fallen on dying eyes and lips; 
If all of mortal woe 
Struck on one heart with breathless blow by blow; 
If melody were tears and tears were starry gleams 
That shone in evening's amethystine dreams; 
Ah, yes, if notes were stars, each star a different hue, 
Trembling to earth in dew; 
Or, of the boreal pulsings, rose and white, 
Made majestic music in the night; 
If all the orbs lost in the light of day 
In the deep silent blue began their harps to play; 
And when, in frightening skies the lightnings flashed 
And storm-clouds crashed, 
If every stroke of light and sound were excess of beauty;
If human syllables could e'er refashion 
that fierce electric passion; 
If ever art could image (as were the poet's duty) 
The grieving, and the rapture, and the thunder 
Of that keen hour of wonder, —
That light as if of heaven, that blackness as of hell, — 
How Paderewski Plays, then might I dare to tell.

II.

How the great master played! And was it he

Or some disembodied spirit which had rushed 

From silence into singing; and had crushed 

Into one startled hour a life's felicity, 

And highest bliss of knowledge—that all life, grief, wrong, 

Turn at the last to beauty and to song!

                                                                      — Richard Watson Gilder, 1891

This poem was published in Gilder's collection A Book of Music (New York, The Century Co., 1906): 32-36. Richard Watson Gilder (1844-1909) was an American poet, writer, journalist, editor, and publisher. He served as managing editor of Scribner’s Monthly renamed The Century Magazine in 1881; he edited it until his death and promoted some of the best American poets and writers.  Gilder published nine volumes of his own poetry, including The Celestial Passion (1887), In the Heights (1905) and A Book of Music (1906). Paderewski came to know him through the recommendation by actress Helena Modjeska (1840-1909) and became close friends with the Gilder family during his American concert tours. Since the poem is too long for a postcard, I made a different card featuring Paderewski's portrait based on Edward Burne-Jones 1891 drawing, published on the cover of The Etude Magazine in 1935.

 PADEREWSKI IN GOLD 

 

Gold halo of curls on his portraits, 

Gold crowns of kings of old above the keys, 

Gold riches of fortune, spent and growing –  

Gold heart beneath it all.  

      The gleam of gold ring on his finger, 

      The gleam of brilliance in his eyes, 

      The gleam of fame that still surrounds him – 

      Gold heart beneath it all.  

The dream of music in his youth, 

The dream of kindness at his prime, 

The dream of Poland, free and mighty – 

Gold heart beneath it all.  

       His heart is gold, so bright and pure. 

       Immortal music he brought to teach 

       Us all to live his noble vision – 

       Truth, Goodness, Beauty – 

       Gold heart beneath it all.              

                                                                                   (c) 2018 by Maja Trochimczyk

In addition to the Paderewski poem-card, I put in the gift bags two of my poems about Chopin, that were earlier posted online, but in different versions.

A Summer Rose Dream 

Rose petals float down 

Onto the desk covered with music  

Pages of notes and ink blots. 

Chopin looks out the window – 

A carmine blossom in her black hair,

Vibrant, exotic beauty at the ball. 

Further… the calm eglantine roses,

By the picket fence of distant home,

His sister, smiling –

Fragrance spills on the velvet 

Of midnight, sparks of notes scatter 

On the canvas of his thoughts. 

His fingers search for memories 

On smooth ivory keys of his piano.  

Roses and nightingales, roses –

                                                                       — Maja Trochimczyk 

Well, I just checked and it turned out that the letter cited above was written not by George Sand but from George Sand's estate in Nohant, by their friend, painter Eugène Delacroix. I have to fix it, next time I print copies of this card. In June 1842 at Nohant Delacroix listened to Chopin’s music: 

“At times, through an open window overlooking the garden, mixed with the singing of nightingales and the fragrance of rose blossoms the melodies of Chopin’s music reach me, because he never stops working here…” [“Par instants, il vous arrive par la fenêtre entr'ouverte sur le jardin des bouffées de la musique de Chopin qui travaille de son côté; cela se mêle au chant des rossignols et à l'odeur des rosiers.”] (Letter of Eugène Delacroix of 7 June 1842 from Nohant to J.B. Pierret in Paris) . 

Continuing on the theme of spring, flowers, and Chopin's music, I wrote another poem:  

 Spring is...

 

                        ...the poetry of violets,

the mist of lilac perfuming 

the air outside your window.

Spring is...  veiled by the Nocturnes – 

Chopin's notes floating up

into galaxies of midnight light.

...sweetened by white hyacinth,  

announced by the lively whistles 

of red-winged blackbirds in your garden.

Spring is...    forgetting darkness, 

oh, the densest, most suffocating 

shadows of death, winter, killings

              ... dark memories erased

by the flutter of sparrows' wings

and piano notes carried by the breeze.

Spring is...     the magic of the Minute 

Waltz and a half-forgotten melody 

of the nightingale – calling you 

back home, into childhood, 

back to Poland, not yet lost –  

                                                                     — Maja Trochimczyk

The last line is an allusion to the Polish national anthem that starts with words "Poland is not yet lost as long as we live" - and the traces of Polish presence are scattered around the world, just like the Historic Home and Gardens of Helena Modjeska in the hills of Orange County, California.  Let us hope that this amazing location becomes a site of great musical and theatrical performances, honoring both Modjeska and her love of music - listening to Chopin, helping the young virtuoso Ignacy Jan Paderewski start his career. 

Modjeska's Portrait by Tadeusz Ajdukiewicz, Museum at Sukiennice, Krakow, Poland.

Fragment of Ajdukiewicz's portrait of Modjeska.

Here is a poem by a 19th-century American poet Celia Thaxter (1835-1894), portraying the actress as she listens to a Chopin recital in the home of journalist Eugene Field in Boston: 

Modjeska

Deft hands called Chopin’s music from the keys. 

Silent, she sat, her slender figure’s poise

Flower-like and fine and full of lofty ease;

She heard her Poland’s most consummate voice 

From power to pathos falter, sink and change; 

The music of her land, the wondrous high, 

Utmost expression of its genius strange, – 

Incarnate sadness breathed in melody.

Silent and thrilled she sat, her lovely face 

Flushing and paling like a delicate rose

Shaken by summer winds from its repose 

Softly this way and that, with tender grace 

Now touched by sun, now into shadow turned,

While bright with kindred fire her eyes burned.

                                                                                      ~ Celia Thaxter (1835-1894)

It looked like rain and the rain scared the audiences away, but it did not rain, so this day reminded me that Californians think they are made of sugar and they would melt in the rain, so they stay home at the sight of a smallest dark cloud...

The house has a mini-stage on one side, built for the actress to perform for her friends gathered in her garden. 

Docents from the Modjeska Foundation in historical costumes conducted tours, seen here beyond the fountain the Foundation helped restore in 2016.

 

"All Together Now" Or the Moebius Strip of Time in 2026

Something strange happens to time as you age, it accelerates so much that you lose track of minutes after getting up and cannot leave the house for work in ten minutes after sleeping in as you used to, cannot find where the year has gone when it is already Christmas again, cannot understand why the white hair, where this person in the mirror came from... It is an endless cycle of springs, summers, autumns, winter, a spiral of flowers budding, opening, their petals falling, the fruit within greening, reddening, ripening... 

Looking at the rectangle of my garden filled with more and more bushes, more and more succulents, cutting into the lawn on all sides, I forget how different it is now, from when I first moved in - the wide expanse of the lawn replaced by scattered baby breath, framed by what was a row of six rose bushes but is now connected into a wide border, punctuated with huge green agave that will turn wine red after blooming just once, a tall stalk of small yellow blossoms attracting even more bees than the pink crape-myrtle tree. 

It is this tree that guarantees the flow of seasons - bare branches are covered with pinkish then greening leaves, big bunches of flowers open as the tree is full of miraculous sound of bees, leaves turn lovely scarlet and shine in afternoon sunlight before falling off in December and starting to grow back in April. Meanwhile, colorful gazanias provide rich palette of rusty reds, burnt oranges, and sunny yellows in their year-round daisy-shaped blossoms. 

In the middle of what used to be the lawn, a grove of pomegranate trees has sprouted by itself where I planted one to replace the old tree with rotten roots, toppled by the winter storm. Seeds from fallen fruit sprouted into four more trees, the juicy pomegranates enriching my body with vitamin C and antioxidants in October through December. So many birds poke holes in the fruit, so many fruit bear marks of being bitten by squirrels on top branches, by racoons at the bottom. I do not begrudge them; they have to eat. What's why I do not use any toxins in the yard anymore. Let it all grow and feed the birds and animals; it was their land before me... From January through June, I have my citrus - clementines, oranges, grapefruit. Luckily, my winged and clawed friends do not like citrus as much... 

The old lemon tree was trimmed once and sprouted new branches at the bottom, bearing flowers and fruit year-round. The dried out old trunk needs to be cut down completely. The newly planted oranges grow too slow for comfort, only the fig tree made huge progress and is a real tree after five years of a simple stick stuck in the ground. Of four rosemary bushes that were meant to outline the corners of one flower bed with the fig in the middle, two died out, the other two became a huge, impenetrable wall of rosemary green, giving me ample harvest of twigs to be tied into bunches and placed on top of all bookshelves, all windowsills in the house. 

Time to trim the rosemary - again? When did the branches grow so tall? I have not noticed. Is it time yet to pick the leftover pomegranate shells so clearly seen on the bare trees? Yes, indeed. Time to feed the roses? I used to say these roses were like pets, they need food and water, they need trimming their branches, and, most of all, they need to be admired day after day, year after year... 

So, one morning, while drinking tea and reading The History of England in One Hundred Places by John Julius Norwich, I penned a poem about the seasons in my garden, the seasons of my life:

All Together Now

        for Marlene Hitt, great poet of the quotidian

When time stops 

everything is present

in the same moment.

The gingko tree is green.

The gingko tree turns gold.

The gingko leaves fall down.

Green - gold - and bare - 

All together now.

The pomegranate's twigs,

dark and sad in winter,

sprout thin, celadon leaves,

bloom with orange star-flowers,

carry heavy fruit - first green

then wine red. The leaves

fade and fall. Birds poke holes

in cracked peel of overripe fruit

to feast on tangy, sweet arils. 

All together now - bare -

celadon - orange - scarlet - bare - 

A baby smiles at her Mom.

A child hands her a bunch 

of autumn leaves in the park.

A teen makes a snowman

in the mountains, her cheeks

bright red from the frost. 

A nervous bride in the church,

red-eyed, she cried for days...

A new mom holds her toddler

on her left hip, smiling, knowing.

All together now - I am

a baby, girl, bride, grandma.

I dance the waltz.

I recite poems. I sing carols.

I make costumes for carnivals. 

ornaments for Christmas trees.

I bake their favorite apple cakes

for first, second, third child, 

fourth, tenth, thirtieth birthdays.

Fortieth mazurka for Easter.

Time flies faster and faster

until it freezes - all is one - 

all moments transfixed into

the colorful thrill of the grand 

finale - all together now - 

Life well lived, errors corrected,

faults forgiven, lies forgotten,

blessings cherished to warm the heart

over and over again - 

All together now

All together now - 

when time stops 

everything is one - 

one with the universe - 

one life of mine -  

(c) 2026 by Maja Trochimczyk

That was quite a lot of fun... especially adding that refrain "all together now" from the Beatles' song "Yellow Submarine" visually portrayed in an animated film so full of color, it seems impossible in these times. Nowadays, feature films are dark, filled with explosions and blood... Actually, why aren't there more films with light and color? Or films about the hard work of inventors - the farmers that experimented until they grew a perfect apple tree, the researchers that came up with insulin or antibiotics, the scientists that made the lightbulb, those who discovered magnetism, electricity, semi-conductors? Would a film of efforts, trials and errors, years of rejection and ultimate triumph not be better for our kids than hundreds of films glorifying violence and destruction by "superheroes"?  How about that prisoner who taught himself higher mathematics and while incarcerated had proven a theorem that many struggled for years? How about that grandma that built a huge company - Aunt Jemima until her portrait disappeared from the boxes of food she pioneered, erased by "virtue-signaling" of the misguided lemming crowd?  Oh, well, that's too depressing. Let's think about time again.

Waiting for Eden

​The mohawk haircut of the birds of paradise.

The emerald necklace of hummingbirds

that perch on spiked agave leaves.

The loud argument of male mockingbirds

clamoring to claim my garden for their nests

- melodiously singing for their ladies, 

chasing each other with a hideous screech, 

rough as their Polish name - przedrzeźniacz.

Beneath the soap-bubble sky, fading

from blue to periwinkle and pale rose - 

a sudden silence marks the arrival of the hawk,

stalking its careless prey. Every living thing

has to eat. I'm not that sorry for house finches,

I just do not want to watch them die.

It is January, again. What am I waiting for

in this miraculously greening, rosemary-

scented, overgrown garden? The ripeness 

of winter clementines? The sweetest 

fragrance of orange blossoms? The perfection 

of time beyond time? When hours stand still 

and clocks die with outstretched hands, 

begging the sky for forgiveness? 

(c) 2026 by Maja Trochimczyk 

This second poem is not so cloyingly sweet as the first one, some danger shows its claws. Ah, I forgot, the Moebius strip from the title... I have always been fond of geometry and stereometry in particular. In high school I was the winner of the Copernican Physics competition of the whole school, having made most progress on the solution of movement of spheres upon larger spheres that no boy was able to solve - to the chagrin of my science teachers, surprised that a mere girl was the best. In the last year of high school I scored 142 on IQ test that mostly consisted of estimating the number of blocks in 3-d structures and counting various other things. In that I was "defeated" by one boy who scored 143, one point higher. He was also two days younger than me - being born in January to my December he appeared a whole year younger in statistics and we both were the youngest kids in our class... 

The Moebius strip has no other side, everything is one, all one, back and front, the end is the beginning. As the famous poet wrote: 

​In my beginning is my end. In succession

Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,

Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place

Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.

Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,

Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth

Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,

Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

Houses live and die: there is a time for building

And a time for living and for generation [...]

From East Coker, I, in the Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot

The master poet continues: 

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away- [...] 

This image of the "distant panorama" being rolled away like stage decor brings so many associations, from Platonic duality of body and soul trough Shakespeare to reincarnation beliefs... It is followed by one of the most famous and often cited descriptions of the purpose of life as awaiting resurrections, with the three theological virtues thrown in, just in case...

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. [...]

From East Coker, III, in the Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot

Death and re-birth. One test after another, one mise-en-scene set up after another, all on the way to perfection, to pure love, to pure being... Paradise. Why would anyone dare to write any poetry after this? Is reading someone else's words enough? What about my reality? My mockingbirds, my pomegranates? My termites gnawing the beams in my old house? Don't they deserve to be observed and described in my own words? So what if it was said again? So what if I repeat myself? Can I not, by my own words, prove my own existence?  The Moebius strip closes, a new circle traces the old one, the cycle of reincarnation draws closer and closer... another round of the Moebius strip will commence...

Moebius strip from Wikimedia Commons. 

Photos from Maja Trochimczyk's garden, 2021-2025