How music is changing the lives of people with Alzheimer’s

Sometime before Donna Williams and John Gasper retired from their jobs as an elementary school teacher and an accountant at a law firm, they made a pact to move from their comfortable home in Richmond Hill, a 30-minute drive south to the city.

Now settled in their new abode, the couple’s retirement isn’t exactly as imagined. In 2013, the year before they moved, Gasper was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

“I’m very fortunate in the sense that John is very inspiring, He finds joy in the simplest of things,” Williams says.

But she admits, “We have this challenge, because it is a challenge.”

Yet it was their decision to relocate that put them in touch with the Toronto chapter of the Alzheimer Society, which was two years into a program that was changing the lives of people with the disease — and those caring for them.

The Music Project was inspired by the documentary Alive Inside, the story of American Dan Cohen and his movement to provide personalized playlists to people with cognitive and physical problems.

The film won the Audience Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. But more than that, it laid bare the invisible and institutional world of the nursing home and showed how music had the power to tap into memories and emotions lost in the tangled web of disease.

“Music connects people with who they have been, who they are in their lives,” Cohen says in the film.

“Because what happens when you get old is all the things you’re familiar with and your identity are all just being peeled away.”

In her role as manager of Toronto’s Music Project, Sabrina McCurbin hears regularly from loved ones of people in the program — 3,500 and counting — telling her of the impact the music is making in their lives.

She has seen a woman with Alzheimer’s suddenly remember the food that was served at her wedding, and another who was able to play music by ear after hearing it on her iPod.

“It’s the goosebumps. You get that feeling of wow, you’ve been able to reconnect someone. It’s really powerful,” she says.

“Guaranteed every day I’m going to tear up from something — but in a positive way.”

Some 564,000 Canadians have Alzheimer’s and less common forms of dementia, and over the next 15 years, that number is expected to jump to 937,000.

This year alone, the cost to the government and caregivers will be $10.4 billion, according to the Alzheimer Society of Canada.

The Music Project — which runs on grants, private donations and volunteers — aims to remove some of that burden by allowing people with Alzheimer’s to stay at home longer. But it also gives those already in long-term care facilities a connection to their past.

McCurbin says they’ve uploaded everything from Korean country to Jay Z, but because of the age group, most songs they use come from the same era. The Sound of Music is their most requested soundtrack by far.

Gasper, 64, whose iPod is loaded with easy rock, jazz and guitarist Jesse Cook, loves to tap along to the music, sing out loud and even get up and dance.

“When I listen to music, I feel good inside,” he says. “It makes me happy and calm.

“Sometimes a song will remind me of something … but mostly I connect with the feeling.”

As neurologist Oliver Sacks explains in Alive Inside, the parts of the brain that respond to music are the last to be touched by Alzheimer’s.

It’s a small but important mercy for those living with the disease.

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