|
|
Brianna Caton is returning to town for a concert on Saturday. |
|
|
Caton makes a joyful noise
Sue Harrison
BANNER STAFF
If her face is not familiar, Brianna Caton's music may be. She starred in the school musicals every year while she was in high school, has played with the orchestra for plays since she graduated, spent two summers as part of the Dyketones band, and has been coming back to give at least one recital each year since she's been at the Berklee College of Music. This Saturday at 2 p.m. she will bring the Flying Free Chorus, a group she founded at Berklee, to the Universalist Meeting House, 236 Commercial St., for a free concert of inspirational and seasonal music.
Caton, who was born and raised in Provincetown, has been singing and playing music for much of her life. She's in her final year at Berklee, where she is majoring in music therapy. For her, it's a natural outgrowth of her love for music and desire to help others.
'I've used music to get through some hard times in my own life,' Caton says. 'I thought I could bring some of that to others and let them see the power of music.'
Her work with music therapy, a cross between music and psychology, has taken her to a lot of unusual places. She's worked in hospitals with Alzheimer's patients, with students at the Perkins School of the Blind and at Shattuck Hospital where she is now doing work with psychiatric patients.
Each of the places and groups of people has shown her something new about how music touches everyone. For the Alzheimer's patients, she says, hearing songs from their childhood or teen-age years can suddenly trigger memories and let them access parts of their lives that were lost to them. 'With the Alzheimer's patients, their short-term memory is cut off,' she says. 'If you sing them songs from their youth, they can recall their memories.'
She remembers there was one man who was part of her music therapy group but rarely took part. Mostly he sat in a chair with his eyes closed and often fell asleep. Once in a while he would play the little bell that he had been given. One day, Caton brought her violin into the session, and the man opened his eyes and paid attention for the entire visit. Later, she says, she found out that the man used to play violin with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
At Perkins her group was working with kids on movement skills when two boys in the class proved completely disruptive because they wouldn't allow each other to take a turn. By the end of the session, the boys had gotten into the songs and into their parts and learned to let the other do his part so the song worked. 'They learned that they had to do that,' she says of the unexpected lesson.
Her current work at Shattuck is with patients who are confined because of mental problems and are never allowed outside. 'They are in the hospital all the time and can't go out,' she says. For those patients, Caton lets them pick out the songs. 'It allows them to be in a social situation and feel like they have some control in the world.'
Caton didn't start out to be in music therapy. She started just making music because she loved it. Her mother taught music in the Provincetown school system and it was natural for Caton to express herself through sound. Eventually she wound up playing the violin, piano, guitar, flute, clarinet, saxophone and drums, as well as being a singer.
She laughingly admits to playing leads in 'The Music Man,' 'Guys and Dolls,' Oklahoma' and 'Hello Dolly' during high school. And she jokes that part of coming home is the fun of being a mini-celebrity and being recognized by people who remember her from the plays or from her concerts or Dyketone days.
Although she's young, just 22, Caton says playing with the Dyketones was a natural for her. They did all oldies music, and she says her favorite music was always from the eras of the '50s to the '70s. She's a big Bette Midler fan and admires her versatility of style. She says she also listens to classical, country, pop and a little jazz.
After one more semester she's headed for an internship at Beth Abraham Health Services in the Bronx. She'll be there for six to nine months and may settle in the New York area afterwards. But for now she's focused on Boston and on Provincetown.
She started the Flying Free Chorus partially because she never got to hang out with pals. 'I thought it would be fun to get together and have some fun outside of class,' she says. 'I thought it would be fun to have a little social chorus.'
In all there are eight others who make up the chorus either as singers or musicians. She's even enlisted her sister Brett to play the drums.
The chorus has been performing together and will be pretty busy during the holiday season. This past Wednesday they sang at a hospice as part of a tree lighting ceremony, this weekend they will sing here in town and the following week they will sing at a home for severely delayed or disabled children.
The Provincetown concert will incorporate a lot of the music the group uses in their therapy work including numbers like 'As Long As I Have Music,' 'Till We Meet Again,' 'Flying Free' and 'Voices that Care.'
And of course there will be plenty of Christmas carols, Caton says before breaking into a verse from the first song. 'As long as I have music, I can find a way. As long as I have music, I can find a brighter day,' she croons into the phone.
'Music brings so much to me,' she says. 'I didn't even know exactly what it was until I began to do this.'
|
Provincetown Banner News
|
|
|
|
|
Jul 22nd, 2010