Victoria choir pitch hits a chord to help bridge memory gap

A Victoria choir is looking for music lovers with memory loss—and their care partners—offering an opportunity to sing and to have conversations about dementia. This umbrella term describes mental decline that is severe enough to interfere with daily living.

“We don't just sing,” Christine Chepyha, choir director for the Voices in Motion Choral Society tells Capital Daily.

“We chat, we visit, we have social functions. And so [members] get to know people who have something in common with them. And one of them is the love of music.”

The other is the loss of memory, one of Alzheimer’s biggest thefts. Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia, forces brain cells to die and the brain to shrink.

With January being Alzheimer's Awareness Month, the Voices in Motion Choir is putting out the call for new members, which it calls “duets.”

The choir’s genesis goes back to a 2018 UVic research project. “They were trying to determine where musical memory lies,” Chepyha says. “And they did determine that it is not affected by dementia and memory loss.”

Memory loss is one of the many effects of dementia, along with a decline in mental functions, such as thinking and reasoning. Dementia also affects personality, mood, and behaviour.

Dimentia is not uncommon

It’s estimated that by 2030, nearly one million Canadians will be living with dementia, and almost twice that number by 2050. There is still no cure for most types of dementia, so breaking barriers and removing stigma are paramount in dealing with it as a society.

And that’s a note the choir tries to hit. Chepyha says choirs are fabulous groups that can pair people who “have nothing else in common except this love of music—and then the other thing might be the fact that everybody's suffering from some kind of form of memory loss,” or knows someone who is, she says.

“That's why it was so important to get the younger generation involved, to have them understand that just because you have this diagnosis doesn't mean that we have to put you in a box and put you away somewhere—you need to be part of the community,” she says.

“And so this is an activity that you can schedule into your week, and it gives you something to look forward to as a choir because we say that it's a non-auditioned choir, you don't have to read music.”

Chepyha calls Voices in Motion “an intergenerational or multi-generational choir experience.”

“Our primary people are those with memory loss and their caregivers or care partners.” Care partners include spouses, siblings—“or they could be a sibling, they could be a child, they could be a neighbour,” she says.

Many members are recently diagnosed

“The people that we get in our choir are probably in the first years of their diagnosis,” she says.

There are actually two choirs of roughly 30-40 people of various ages, Chepyha says: one that meets Tuesday mornings at UVic Multifaith Centre; and one that convenes Wednesday afternoons at Sacred Heart Church.

They’ll rehearse weekly and then unite for an end-of-season concert scheduled for May 3 at the Unity Commons building (or First Met Building) at 932 Balmoral.

The choir’s musical repertoire comes from movies such as Mary Poppins and pop culture tunes from Gordon Lightfoot and The Beatles, among others.

The choir is welcoming as many new members as are interested, with no limit.

For more information visit the Voices in Motion Choral Society website or contact info@voicesinmotionchoirs.org