Transcription of Andrea Graichen for the show Music & Memory #199
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. You are listening to Love Maine Radio show number 199, Music and Memory, airing for the first time on Sunday, July 5, 2015. Music can unlock memories that we may have otherwise lost. This past spring the Coral Art Society of Maine presented, Time Remembered, Time Forgotten, the New England premier of Alzheimer’s stories to create awareness of the link between music and memory. Today we speak with Coral Art Society board member and vocal soloist Andrea Graichen and Bill Kirkpatrick program director for the Alzheimer’s Association Maine chapter about this interesting collaboration. Thank you for joining us.
Today we have with us Andrea Graichen. She is a frequent soloist in the greater Portland area and a long-time member of the Coral Art Society in the St. Mary School of early music ensemble. Andrea serves on the board of directors of the Coral Art Society. In the past, she has worked in senior care and in healthcare. Currently, she is working as a classical music vocal soloists. Thanks so much for coming in today.
Andrea: Thank you for having me.
Lisa: You’ve been doing a lot of exciting project. One exciting project that I know you did recently in May was having to do with Alzheimer’s disease.
Andrea: That’s right. We had a program that we presented on May 9th that was the New England premier of a piece called Alzheimer’s Stories by Robert Cohen. The particular project was about two years in the making. We had a lot of moving parts. Very early on we partnered with the Alzheimer’s Association Maine chapter over in Scarborough. They were so helpful in getting us connected with some of the important things that we might consider. We had a pre-concert forum that featured our conductor, Robert Russell; the composer, Robert Cohen, who came up from New Jersey; Kate Beever, a music therapist; Bill Kirkpatrick, who’s the program director at the Maine chapter; and we invited a poet, Judy Prescott, who’s mother was cared for here in Maine. It was a very serendipitous connection. I was in a coffee shop waiting to meet a friend, and I saw your magazine, actually. I opened it up at the time and the column that said What Mainers Are Reading featured Judy Prescott’s book, Searching For Cecy: Reflections On Alzheimer’s. It was Judy’s way of processing her experience as her mother descended into the Alzheimer’s disease.
I thought I’ll reach out to her and see if we could maybe use her poetry or some artwork, which is really beautiful. Family members contributed artwork to her book. She said, “Absolutely. Anything I can do to help”, which became I wonder if she’d actually come? She was so excited to plan to come, but at the last moment she got very sick. Her brother helped out by reading some of her poetry in our concert, and he sat on that forum panel as well. We had the pre-concert forum planned. We also did a slide show tribute that audience members and chorus members could participate in. We invited people to send in photographs of loved ones or caregivers, friends who are either dealing with the disease or have unfortunately passed away. We did an in-memory of and in-honor of slide show. Then we had two halves of a concert. The first half was music of celebration and remembrance and the second half was the New England premier of Alzheimer’s Stories.
Lisa: Tell about Alzheimer’s Stories why was this an important piece for him to compose?
Andrea: It was a commission from a chorus in Pennsylvania. One of the chorus members lost both parents to the disease and wanted to honor them somehow and proposed a commission of some kind of piece that could do that. Robert Cohen was engaged to do the piece. He writes a lot of musical theater, so he knew how to deliver a very powerful message in a careful profound, yet, powerful way. He frequently works with Herschel Garfein, who is a librettist, who had a very innovative idea. How do we tell this story? How can we honor the people in a true and valid way? He invited chorus members, community members to contribute to a blog, Tell Us Your Stories, and they did. Some of the stories actually wound up as part of the music. There were different characters.
The first movement is simply called The Numbers. The chorus sings very dry data about the unfortunate number of victims that we had in 2009 when the piece was written and then projecting 2050 for example. In the middle of the first movement, the two soloists, the baritone soloist and the metso soloist, become characters. The baritone soloist becomes Dr. Alzheimer. The metso is Auguste Deter, who was a very unusual patient at the time back in 1901. She was fifty-one and committed to a mental institution where Alzheimer rounded. He did not know what he was seeing with her. She was, like you might see with Alzheimer’s, aggressive, unpredictable, couldn’t remember things so unusual for a fifty-one year old. What we’re guessing now is it was early onset. He worked with her for five years. When she passed a way, he actually looked at her brain and found some of the hallmarks of the disease, which are the pockets of emptiness in there, the tangled fibers and such. That comprised the first movement of Cohen’s piece.
The second movement was called The Stories. The chorus tells a story of visiting with mom or visiting with dad and then unusual things happen like mom can’t remember how to drive or we might need to put dad in a nursing home. Again, the soloist says, “Please, don’t do that. I’m fine driving.” Then the metso takes on the role of a woman in a nursing home but she doesn’t realize she’s there. She thinks she’s back on a boat to Panama and the handrail she used to run along with her sister and grab the handrails and swing on things. The chorus comes into her remind her, “Mom, those are handrails in a nursing home. They help you walk”, but she doesn’t want to hear that. The baritone soloist tells the story of being in the Navy, and the chorus says, “Oh, here we go again.” Another classic hallmark of the disease, the repetition of stories, repetition of words.
The third movement is dedicated to the caregivers. It, I believe, was the hardest one for Cohen to put together. How do we make this piece hopeful and positive, and he did. He and Garfein put together the words that love and music are the last things to go. It is true that music is used in therapy with dementia patients because somehow those vestiges of the brain are left somewhat intact. Through music we can somehow elicit responses from dementia patients that they might not otherwise be able to get out. It was a very profound, very powerful, positive experience for all of us.
Lisa: Tell me what it felt like as you were yourself part of this? Tell me what you were experiencing?
Andrea: Well, I was very fortunate to sing the metso soloist role and so I wanted to be accurate but not overdo the portrayal of the characters. Auguste Deter for me was confused but not angry just confused. She didn’t know where she was. Alzheimer’s said to her, “What’s your name?” “Auguste.” “What’s your husband’s name?” “Auguste.” “What about your children?” “I have children?” I wanted it to be subtle and confused a little detached. In the second movement telling the story of the little girl running along the boat to Panama it was joyous because I pictured someone remembering that memory and having so much pleasure reliving that. In the last movement the caregiver I wanted to make sure that it was positive that it would honor the families and the caregivers and all that they did to let them know that we understood some of their struggles. It was wonderful. Going to the rehearsals every week, there were stories in the chorus too. A lot of people have dealt with this, so there were some struggles. Sometimes people couldn’t sing. Every week people got more invested and the end result was so exciting, so moving. Everybody really had ownership of it and was really proud that we were doing something meaningful and helping out the Alzheimer’s Association because it was a benefit impart to help them.
Lisa: How did the audience respond?
Andrea: They loved it. We got so much positive feedback. We had one woman in particular who spoke in the pre-concert forum talking about her own mother who could not verbalize with her Alzheimer’s disease. Yet, she heard some African dialects here in Maine that reminded her of her work as a youth over in Africa and that opened her up. She spoke to us in the forum about how important it is not just with music but to remember languages with people to try to reach them. She approached me afterward and she said, “My mother passed away a few months ago. I’m still processing it. Tonight I cried from the beginning to the end, but it was very healthy. It really helped me process all of this”, so we helped some people.
Lisa: Why are you, yourself, so invested in Coral Arts in Maine?
Andrea: I’ve always been involved with music since about the age of ten. We had a great music teacher in my elementary school who get us singing. We had a great orchestra. There was a string program as well. I know a lot of the schools now do band, but I’m fifty-eight and so at the time it was orchestra. I had those two outlets. It gave me a chance to make friends, to pursue some things, to express myself. When I married my husband, we went off into the Air Force and wherever I went, wherever we were stationed, I’d find music. I think it’s so important for young people because it offers an outlet. If they may be struggling to try to find themselves, it offers a safe place where they can discover and explore, find friends, forever friends I hope.
The Coral Art Society in Portland is an important part of my life. There are three ensembles. I am fortunate to sing in all three. Early on I was invited to sit on the board. I tried to participate in programming and whatever I can do to help get our message out. I think it’s important to try to keep the arts a live. Portland is a very vibrant place for the arts. We’re so lucky to have the Friday art walks and the courses, ballet, symphony, string quartets, jazz there’s everything here. It’s wonderful. I just think it’s important to keep it in the forefront.
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Lisa: Is there something for you about the singing that keeps you linked to your essential self?
Andrea: Absolutely. Singing is different. I’ve played instruments as well. It’s great to make music with instruments. There’s something so personal about a singing voice. In some of the research I’ve read indicates that people who sing have a great sense of community. There is a shared experience getting the message out. One of the things you love about singing is being able to tell the story whatever it is. Whether it’s early music or jazz or Broadway or opera, why did composer write this? Why were the words chosen that are on that paper? What can I do to honor what the composer probably meant, but what can I do to put my own stamp on it? I like being able to do that.
Lisa: Knowing how connected this makes you to yourself, it must have been very interesting to offer this to a group of people Alzheimer’s, caregivers, maybe even some patients in the audience who were themselves connecting through the words that were coming out and through the music on the stage?
Andrea: Right. The first half as I said was music of celebration and reflection. What the music director was trying to do was perhaps honor the love that we’ve all felt. One of the points of a lot of the therapy is to try to recapture some of the memories from someone’s youth where some of those memories may be the most available to a patient. He wanted to focus on love to maybe recapture young love when people might have been married. I had the great fortune of working with a support group during my work in senior care. I got to know some people who were struggling, “Should I put my loved one in a nursing home? I have put my loved one in a facility. Will that person remember me? If I skip a day, will that make a difference?” A lot of guilt, a lot of love, but the love was always really paramount. I think it was important to honor some of that in the first half of our concert.
One of the things that I’ve learned in some research on dementia and music therapy is that it is those younger songs the things that give us identity, national identity or social identity, family identity. Some of the things that we experienced as young people are the songs that really bring the strongest responses. Even if people are non-verbal, the songs can draw them out. They’ll sing along. They remember the lyrics where they might not remember a family’s name. It was important to keep all that in mind no matter who was sitting in the audience that night that we were trying to honor some of the things that might bring them pleasure no matter where they were in their journey.
Lisa: How is this performance different from other performances that you have done either with the Coral Art Society or with other organizations?
Andrea: This one involved some out reach, which the Coral Art Society hasn’t really done a lot of. It was a partnership from the start with the Alzheimer’s Association. It was a very clear goal that we wanted to help them. They in turn helped us get the word out about the concert and were totally invested in what we were doing from the start. It was different. It felt different that we were not just performing music but there was a very particular purpose in mind. We also had a lobby gallery of some therapy ideas for people. We had Kate Beever, our music therapist on the panel, who was available to talk to people. The Alzheimer’s Association was there. We had photos of an early stage activity group from the Maine chapter in Scarborough. Pictures of doing wonderful things, hiking and art therapy, snowshoeing, skiing, and how brave are these people living their lives knowing what’s coming. We had displays of that.
We had a photographer displaying pictures of his dad. That was his way of processing his own feelings going into the nursing home to see his dad. We had a list of memory cafes, which are safe places where people can go and share their experiences. The social networking I think is very important for them. If people want to investigate where some of those memory cafes are, I think it’s available on the internet. What else did we have? We had Judy Prescott’s family there with some of her poetry books. We had a display from the Harmonaires Chorus Group up in Brunswick. It is comprised of dementia patients and their caregivers. They are wonderful. I got to hear them perform at a state education conference. They are really good and fun to watch. They memorize their music. It’s all right there. It’s so fun. They get such joy out of singing. We had a lot of things available for people.
They could take information home with them. They could take the program home with them that had the information in there as well. It was a very different program from Court Art Society with the outreach and a lot of moving parts. It gave us a model for what we may do in the future if we want to try to do some innovative programming. We’ve done collaborations with other art organizations, ballet, opera, organ, but this was the first time we’ve ventured into more of a social outreach purpose.
Lisa: What do you have coming up for the second part of 2015?
Andrea: For myself, personally, I have early music concerts. The Coral Art Society will be singing with the Portland symphony in October. Then we move onto our Christmas at the Cathedral weekend the first weekend in December. We have a Messiah sing along which is very popular.
Lisa: Andrea, I’m not sure everybody knows how early music is defined so if you could tell us what that is and why are you attracted to that? What is it that this does for you in general?
Andrea: Absolutely. I am not an expert by any means in early music. I was invited to sing in an ensemble that does perform that particular genera. I’ve been learning on fly and learning a lot and having a great appreciation for what these musicians do. There are what are called broke instruments different types of violins and bows, violas, early cellos, which are called viola da gamba, which are different. We have a wonderful lutenist who plays with us, plays lute and theorbo. I love to listen to them play. It’s a different style. It’s a very dry style not romantic necessarily but what was appropriate in say the 1600’s, early 1700’s. We have even performed some pieces in one of my ensembles as early as the 800’s. It’s fascinating to think what would be historically accurate? What would be correct in singing their different styles; for example, different ways to treat some of the music that would perhaps harken back to that time.
The languages we sing in Italian, German. We’ve done some Spanish, French. Some of the French is early French. It’s not what you might hear today. That’s a learning process as well. I think what I like best about that is making that music available here in the Portland area. It’s unusual. People don’t get to hear it all the time. For example, this past weekend we performed music by Monteverdi. He composed a wonderful mini drama about love in a loving way but also in a bit of a combative way. He wrote for the first time some of the darker sides of love and it was fascinating to bring that to life.
One of the focal pieces was the story of a warrior who fell in love with a woman but she also dressed as a warrior and he did not know that. They battled each other. She happened to succumb to a mortal wound. He took her helmet off and realized it was the woman he loved. There was a wide range of emotion in that. A lot of that type of music and expression was heard for the first time when Monteverdi wrote that. We paired with the Portland Ballet Company had two dancers tell the story through dance as it was being sung, and it added a wonderful element for the audience and for the performers as well. We got to see a dancer interpretation, singer interpretation, musician interpretation of early music. The audience loved it. I loved it. It made such a difference to hear that music brought to life here in Portland but also with a dance element as well.
Lisa: It seems like there may be a future collaboration maybe with the Alzheimer’s Association but maybe with other social groups. If not, people can certainly experience the joy of the Coral Art Society work. How can people find out more about the Coral Art Society?
Andrea: They can find us on the web at www.coralart.org. They can also send an e-mail to [email protected] or call our number at 828-0043. Anybody could investigate our performances or audition opportunities if they’d like to be part of the organization or contact us if they’d like to volunteer and find out more about us.
Lisa: Well, those of you who are listening who are singers and have been singing in your shower for years but would like the opportunity to actually have a greater voice … Maybe this would be me. John McCain is pointing at me. I encourage you to look into what’s being done with the Coral Art Society. This is certainly something I have learned a lot about during our conversation today, Andrea. We’ve been speaking with Andrea Graichen, who is on the board of directors with the Coral Art Society and also a frequent soloist in the greater Portland area. Thank you so much for doing what you do.
Andrea: Thank you very much for having me. It was great to talk to you.