Members spend the summer visiting memory care, hospice facilities, and shelters
The Phoenix Symphony is counting down to its new season, which opens in October. While their gig on Tuesday of this week was smaller than those they’ll soon encounter at Symphony Hall, the connection proved just as deep.
A brass quintet of Symphony members spent the afternoon in the memory care facility at Friendship Village in Tempe. They played seven songs in a celebration of tunes from the movies that was as therapeutic as its was entertaining.
“It brings back that memory to them,” Friendship Village activities coordinator Brenda Arnold said. “It makes them feel happy. It makes them feel comfortable about themselves. There’s a gentleman (here) and sometimes he knows all the words. We can’t get anything else out of him. Music really opens up the mind.”
While a neurological disorder like dementia typically brings a decline in emotional, social, behavioral, or cognitive abilities in patients, music has the opposite effect. A 2023 National Library of Medicine report on Music Therapy in the Treatment of Dementia analyzed ways that music lessens the effects of aging-related cognitive decline.
“The brain is affected by music function and enhances some cognitive abilities, including the mechanism of speech, alteration, memory, and learning,” the research paper’s findings noted. “Music can activate the limbic system, subcortical circuits, and emotionally related systems, inducing the sensation of well-being.”
A Friendship Village resident, Mary Ann, was among the couple dozen taking in the Tuesday matinee performance. The former choir director and handbell director started playing violin at a young age growing up in Indiana and later studied music in college.
It took no time for Mary Ann to feel at home with the universal language she knew.
“You’ve got all the brass and trumpets. We were all violins – alto violin, bass violin,” she said. “They did very well. Really very well.”
The quintet of Brad Edwards (trombone), Ben Nguyen (trumpet), Ben Ordaz (tuba), Nancy Dimond (French horn) and Josh Haake (trumpet) included in their salute to music from the movies “You’ve Got a Friend In Me” by Randy Newman from “Toy Story”; “I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith from 1998’s “Armageddon”; “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” with music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda from Disney’s 2021 animated musical “Encanto”; “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison, which has appeared in many movies including notably in the 1989 film “Born on the Fourth of July”; “Is This Love?” by Bob Marley, from the 2024 biopic “Bob Marley: One Love”; “Always Remember Us This Way” by Lady Gaga from her 2018 movie “A Star is Born”; and “Respect,” written by Otis Redding and performed by Aretha Franklin in the 1998 movie “Blues Brothers 2000.”
If many of those selections sound upbeat, that’s by design.
“We tell them, hey listen, ‘If you want to dance go ahead and dance,’” said Nguyen, who has been with The Phoenix Symphony more than 30 years and puts together the selist. “At first they’re a little bit shy about it but by the end of the show we got half the room either moving along or actually get up and start dancing.”
Other musicians, such as Edwards, who is a substitute with the Symphony when not in his primary role as professor in ASU’s School of Music, Dance and Theatre, have a personal stake in these such performances. His mother, stricken with ALS, lived in a facility for 14 years.
He and his trombone join Symphony members when they play around the Valley at memory care facilities, shelters, and at hospices.
“Sometimes you get this instant reaction and it’s amazing how someone will hear and all of a sudden they just come alive. It’s amazing,” Edwards said. “‘What did you have for dinner last night?’ ‘I don’t know,’ and then they’ll hear a tune from 30 years ago and they can sing every word.”
And members stay busy through these outreach performances around the Valley during the summer. The brass quintet at Friendship Village played four performances on Monday this week alone, followed by two more Tuesday.
The Phoenix Symphony will open its new season with an opening weekend that will feature Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony Oct. 3-5 at Symphony Hall.
Visit phoenixsymphony.org.
