Janice Jensen, a music teacher from KinderVillage in Cary, has hauled four keyboards and stands to Jordan Oaks retirement community without complaint every Monday morning for the past eight weeks.

“I want them to have good equipment,” she said of her four-member class — all residents of Jordan Oaks, all seniors, all having never had a piano lesson a day in their lives.

This is Jensen’s first year teaching piano to the residents at Jordan Oaks, and judging from the class’ last session of the year on Dec. 15, it’s been quite a success.

“You’re playing Beethoven after six, seven weeks!” she said triumphantly to class members Evelyn McCarthy, Robbie Surprise and Lois Mack.

The fourth classmate, Grey Maynard — a class favorite judging by how highly the women spoke of him — missed the last lesson because he wasn’t feeling well.

It was the only class Maynard ever missed.

The ladies carried on without him, starting with listening to relaxing music, deep breathing and stretching their fingers.

“A lot of us have arthritis,” McCarthy said.

After warming up, they launched into “Saturday Night,” a jazzy number that got McCarthy dancing in her seat, mouthing the numbers on her sheet music that were associated with the keys on her piano.

“Last week we were getting too attached to the numbers on the keys,” Jensen said. “Now we want to start learning the notes.”

Jensen plays background music on a boom box with each song, which helps her students keep the correct beat.

It also makes it more fun.

“This is a low-stress class,” Jensen said, preferring to focus more on fun and musicality than strict technique. “[But] these ladies are perfectionists who don’t like to make mistakes.”

Jensen encouraged everyone to pick songs that really speak to them and mid-class, she changed everyone’s keyboard setting to a different instrument sound, like the flute, trumpet or a glockenspiel.

“What’s a glockenspiel?” asked McCarthy.

“I think it’s like a xylophone,” laughed Jensen, succeeding at keeping her students relaxed.

Which is more beneficial than you might think.

Jensen shared literature detailing studies, like the National Association of Music Merchants-funded 1999 project that found seniors who took group music lessons reported decreased feelings of depression, anxiety and loneliness.

The study also reported that the seniors showed an increase in human growth hormone, which typically decreases about 75 percent as people age — its depletion contributing to osteoporosis, low energy levels, wrinkling, decreased sexual function, loss of muscle mass and aches and pains.

Whatever the health benefits, it was clear the class was focused on their music, despite some interruptions in the Jordan Oaks activity room, like two loud workmen installing a new vending machine.

They segued from “Ode to Joy” to “Jingle Bells” and then class was over.

Jensen handed each student a diploma and announced that the next session of classes would start in January.

Everyone promised to practice about 10 minutes a day — it is a testament to Jensen’s teaching prowess that all of her students bought their own keyboards for their rooms.

“My son gave me a keyboard,” said Mack. “It keeps the mind active.”

McCarthy, eating the cookies that Jensen brought to celebrate their final session, remembered putting her eight children to bed each night with classical music.

“Music is so relaxing,” she said. “My mother played by ear and my father played the drums.”

Jensen’s own 10-year-old daughter Grace was scheduled to come by Jordan Oaks that very night with her elementary school chorus, to sing to the residents at dinnertime.

“It’s a universal, generational thing,” Jensen said about her life’s work, music. “It’s something you can do together.”