Posts Related to: Aging Brain

“There’s no wrong way to play” is usually my mantra when facilitating a drum class or music therapy session with older adults. In music, dance, and art, there is no wrong way to express yourself. Whatever comes out is an extension of yourself. (Leave the judgment and criticism behind during this article.) Truly, as much as …

Nearly 20 years ago, I had a guitar teacher who made most of his income playing concerts in nursing homes. I never knew such a career existed, and it was years before I met anyone else who did this work. Now, a confluence of events has made playing music in senior facilities a sought-after career …

A college friend with whom I have not spoken in years contacted me recently. Just as she and her husband were looking forward to the next phase of their lives, she learned last year, at 49, that she has Parkinson’s disease.
 
She saw the Music After 50 site, and asked me if I knew what instrument …

In the late 1980s, Roy Ernst, then a professor at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, envisioned the creation of a music program for retired adults. He thought it would be great fun for the players, but that there would not be much of an audience. Fortunately, he was wrong.
Today, Ernst’s 19-year-old organization, New Horizons …

Music is as old as mankind. And yet, the physical, emotional, and biological effects of playing music have not been widely studied. Over the past several years, the Yamaha Music and Wellness Institute has been on a quest to change that. The institute supports what is probably the largest body of scientific research in the …

Marion Somers recently spied a $75 guitar at a garage sale and snapped it up. Somers, who is 69, doesn’t play the guitar, but she’d like to learn. “I love guitar music,” she says. “I love calypso music and dance music that has guitar; the sound of guitar resonates in my heart.”
Marion Somers, PhD, is …

Gene D. Cohen was ahead of his time. Well before human aging was studied from a psychological or neurological perspective, Dr. Cohen was doing both. He proved that aging was a time of creativity – and not decline – and spent his life writing and teaching about this phenomenon. Gene D. Cohen, MD, PhD, died this past …

Elli Fordyce’s first CD, “Something STILL Cool” came out when she was 70 – to rave reviews. At 72, the New York-based jazz singer has released her second and latest CD, “Songs Spun of Gold.” Like anyone who has reached their 70s, Fordyce doesn’t just have a story – she has thousands of them!
There’s the …

A thread was started on the Music After 50 forum about joint and muscle pains of guitar players, and how to treat these problems. We didn’t know how to advise one another and then … eureka! I remembered that there is an orthopaedic surgeon in the Philadelphia area who is not only a prominent hand surgeon, but …

When cellist Biana Kovic taught at a summer music workshop in northern Maine in her 20s, she encountered a man in his 80s who had traveled from Boston to study the cello with her. He had made the drive alone. She asked him what motivated him to get in a car by himself and drive more than …