[Dutch opera singer Maartje de Lint singing with participants of the program Singing Circle]
[Participants]
Maartje de Lint (interview): “The singing Circle is a place for people with a vulnerable brain, and their partners or family members. And where we show them in a kind and safe space that there is actually a perspective if you are ill in your brain, if you have challenges in the brain. And the part of music in the brain where we experience music hardly ever gets sick. So this is our working material.”
[Participants seated in a circle during a singing workshop]
[Megan Worthy, suffering from a rare form of early-onset dementia called posterior cortical atrophy and her daughter Bronte Henfling]
Megan Worthy (interview): “It’s pretty brutal. I’m, starting to lose everything, you know, and this is really rewarding and seeing all these people, yeah, it did make me have a lot of memories.”
[Megan Worthy with her daughter Bronte Henfling singing]
Bronte Henfling (interview): “Just hearing everyone come together and sing and, you know , it’s a, reminds us that we’re all human and there’s a humanity of it, which is really, yeah, pleasing and nice to be a part of.”
[Participants singing]
[Woman in the middle crying and being comforted by two other women]
[Helpers handing out paper tissues]
[Participants]
Brankele Frank (interview): “For people with dementia or Alzheimer’s or other kind of neurodegenerative diseases, it might actually be extra beneficial because it speaks to brain areas that haven’t really been degenerated yet. So for example, their verbal skills often are compromised, but music speaks to parts of the brain that doesn’t necessarily need verbal skills. And so it taps into… their emotion, their sense of self, their identity.”
[Couple singing]
Maartje de Lint (interview): “When they have been here once, they want to come back and yeah, we have now the challenge of being sold out in the group, but Concertgebouw as well as me, we are very, very happy that we can help each other with this wonderful project and help so many people.”
[Participants engaged in a singing circle]
Selien Kneppers (interview): “We always say, music is like vitamins.”
[Group singing “Amazing Grace”]
[Exterior of the Concertgebouw]
[Cyclists and pedestrians passing by the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.