Holiday Concert Alert

The other day I mentioned my longtime friend, John Kander, all the way from back at Camp Nebagamon, and how his nephew Jason Kander was being featured on 60 Minutes (which you can see here).  Well, today, John gets front and center.

There's a point to this all, but it requires some background.  Bear with me...
 
John is Executive Director of a wonderful organization called “Music Mends Minds,” founded in 2015 by Carol Rosenstein and Irwin Rosenstein.  The foundational principle  is that research has found music therapy has beneficial efforts for people with neurocognitive disease, whether Alzheimer's or Parkinson's.  
 
It turns out, as their website notes, that ”Music seems to be retained in the brain differently from other sorts of cognition such as memory and language and can be accessed as a form of communication when other avenues are lost.”  (If you watched the TV special in 2021 of Tony Bennett’s final concert at Radio City Music Hall, all the while dealing with debilitating Alzheimer’s, you know what this refers to and how truly impactful music is for those with cognitive decline.)
 
Music Mends Minds was even featured on the PBS NewsHour.  I can’t embed theegment, but you can watch it here.

The organization has branches in five states and four countries outside the U.S. (in Canada, the U.K., the Philippines and Rwanda).  There's also a very active chapter at UCLA, whose research has been significant in the field, with student involvement from such departments as neuroscience, biochemistry, psychobiology, human biology and more.
 
And yes, as I said, there’s actually a fun point to all this.  Especially for people in Los Angeles, but everyone can enjoy it, as well.
 
On this Saturday -- tomorrow, as I write this -- December 7 at 2 PM (Los Angeles time), the organization is having its annual free Music Concert.  I went to a rehearsal a couple weeks ago, and it was a total joy.  Their “flagship band,” known as the 5th Dementia Band, was wonderful, the lyrics to sing along with are flashed on a screen as sort of "supertitles" like those used at the opera, and people would get up in the aisles and dance.  (There are 18 house bands throughout the organization.)

 
In fact, I recorded a brief video of one of the numbers at the rehearsal, to give you a bit of sense of it all.  You'll see a young, core combo backed by the members performing "Bye Bye Blackbird".  (Alas, there’s no dancing in this clip, but on the good side, you get to see John singing along.  He’s on the left in the second row, in a dark sweater and glasses.  He comes from good music pedigree.  As I’ve mentioned previously, his uncle is also John Kander, who wrote the music to such shows as Cabaret and Chicago.  My friend is JK II.)

​The Holiday Concert with the 5th Dementia Band and Special Guests will be held in Brentwood at the Presbyterian Church at 12000 San Vicente Blvd.  There’s free parking at the church lot south of San Vicente on Bundy Drive – or for for those who are better able to walk (to free up spaces in the closer lot), across the street at the Comerica Bank: 12001 San Vicente at Saltair (on the Upper Level)
 
For those in the area who can’t make it, or who live elsewhere, I believe they will be livestreaming the concert, which you should be able to watch at this link here.  It’ll be worth it.  They livestreamed yesterday’s rehearsal, and it was a treat.

For that matter, you can click on this link right now or anytime to watch the rehearsal I attended on November 21, to give you a very ragged sense of what it's like.  No, you can't see me -- though at the 6:15 mark you do see John get up to greet me!  So, that's the best I can do...  But if you do check out this particular rehearsal, jump to the 24:45 mark -- there's a beautiful, original song, "Christmas Must Be Somewhere," written and performed by one of the members, Bryan Scott Johnson.  He is a New York-based actor and singer, who as it happens was on Broadway in Mama Mia for around 10 years. He got Parkinson's eight years ago, yet his performance is terrific.

As is the full event and organization.