Free Concert Raises Awareness About Communications Impairments

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The School of Public Health and Health Sciences’ Department of Communications Disorders is hosting a free concert, Broken Chords, Healing Harmonies, to celebrate the transformative power of music and to raise community awareness about communication impairments.

The concert, which is open to the public, will run from 1-2:15 p.m. Saturday, March 30 at the Northampton Center for the Arts, 33 Hawley St.

Featuring works by Ravel, Ives, Vaughan Williams, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, the concert will culminate in a performance by the Healing Harmonies choir, comprised of students, alumni, faculty and community members living with communication challenges. The choir is led by Shelley Roberts, a UMass alumna with advanced training in leading choirs to benefit individuals with communication disorders.

“Our primary goal is to shine a light on the diversity of clients with neurogenic communication impairments who are served by the department and our amazing graduate students, and the transformative, healing power of music in neurorehabilitation,” says Lisa Sommers, clinical assistant professor and clinic director of the department’s Center for Language, Speech and Hearing.

Christian Schwebler, a graduate student in speech-language pathology and former opera singer, is organizing the concert and also will perform. He says the process builds community. “In rehearsal, we gather to improve breath support and vocal quality. We learn songs, and we get to practice them together. There has been a secondary benefit to recruiting this heterogenous mixture of people from all walks of life—new connections and relationships get to form in the most unexpected and surprising fashion.”

 Many of the composers featured in the program lived with aphasia, dementia, unilateral hearing loss or bilateral hearing loss. “Despite their conditions, these composers retained a profound connection to music to the very end of their lives,” Schwebler notes.

The concert is made possible, in part, by a grant from the UMass Arts Council.