When strokes or other injuries damage the left hemisphere of their brain, many people have difficulty putting their thoughts and ideas into words. But they can still sing.
Karen McFeeters Leary saw it over and over again in her 23 years as a speech language pathologist treating patients with aphasia, a condition that affects the way people process language and speak. Because some therapies involve music, she said, it was standard practice to evaluate clients’ ability to sing. Regardless of the severity of their speech loss, nearly all could — “some, flawlessly,” she said.
Leary, 56, of Milton, is also a singer-songwriter with a choral background. She had an idea: Why not have a choir? Aphasia can be isolating, she knew. Why not bring people together with their spouses and caregivers to sing?
She launched the Aphasia Choir of Vermont in 2014 with 11 people with aphasia and 11 spouses, caregivers and volunteers.
“When I sing, I feel free.” Jay O’Neill
The group, which gives its annual concert at Colchester High School this Sunday, June 1, now has 53 members ranging in age from 40 to 88. Twenty-eight have aphasia. Nine of the original members with aphasia are still in the choir, which has adopted Hans Christian Andersen’s words as its motto: “Where words fail, music speaks.”
Over the years, members have driven from Rutland, Calais, Wilmington and Montpelier for weekly rehearsals in Colchester. Seven people participate virtually, and five of them will come for the concert. The Aphasia Choir, they say, has provided friendship, understanding, the opportunity to educate others about their condition and precious moments of fluency.
“When I sing, I feel free,” member Jay O’Neill told Leary. He now participates from Maine.
Each year, the chorus performs a selection of pop songs, mostly from the 1960s and ’70s. Leary chooses familiar songs with uplifting themes and choruses that repeat, and the singers vote on them.
Because this marks the choir’s 10th concert — it missed two during the pandemic — the group will sing numbers that were unanimous favorites in prior years, songs the crowd is sure to know: “New York, New York,” “I Got You Babe,” “Old Time Rock & Roll” and “Let It Be.” Some lyrics sound especially poignant coming from these singers: “Lean on me when you’re not strong.” “I get by with a little help from my friends.” “Sing, sing a song … Don’t worry if it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear.”
No prior experience is required to join, and musical résumés vary. Kate Hill, 85, of Shelburne sang at All-State with her New Jersey high school choir. Chris Colt, 64, of Calais continues to write and produce musicals despite his 2013 stroke. Seasoned performer Michael Hayes — better known by his alter ego, drag queen Margaurite LeMay — sang with the choir the year before he died, in 2023. And Jericho’s Bob Smith, 76, had just one gig before he joined: the backyard solstice parties he and his wife hosted. Singing Brian Eno’s “Baby’s on Fire” was his tradition.
At a recent rehearsal, they sang in harmony and in a round and played kazoos.
At least 2 million Americans have aphasia, making it more common than cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and muscular dystrophy. The result of a stroke or other brain injury, aphasia is an impairment of language that affects the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write. There are many types of aphasia, and the condition ranges in severity but does not affect intelligence. It is “the ability to access ideas and thoughts through language — not the ideas and thoughts themselves — that is disrupted,” the National Aphasia Association says.
People with aphasia are able to sing because the language center, on the left side of their brain, has been damaged, Leary explained. But certain musical skills, including the ability to remember and sing melodies and songs, are dominated by the right side. “So someone with left-hemisphere brain damage, who can’t speak, can tap into that undamaged right hemisphere and have this experience of fluency,” Leary said.
Singing helps — Leary is sure of it. “I don’t promote this as a therapeutic method,” she said. “But it’s undeniable that there’s something happening of benefit, when it comes to people’s language skills, after the program.”
Some choir members speak more fluently after the 12-week choir season, their spouses have told Leary. “I see elevated moods, social connection, a sense of belonging, reconnection — all those benefits,” she said, “but I see it equally in the caregivers. They’re able to do something with their loved ones — with their loved ones — versus for their loved ones.”
Jen Smith, 66, who sings in the choir with her husband, Bob, calls it “a joy infusion.”
Bob has sung with the choir since its inception. He was a 59-year-old home builder and the head coach of Mount Mansfield Union High School’s girls’ hockey team when he had a stroke in 2008. Unresponsive for two weeks and hospitalized for about six, he spoke his first words to his family during a phone conversation when he told his daughter, “Happy birthday.”
Wearing jeans and a plaid flannel shirt at a recent rehearsal, he looked like he just stepped off a construction site. But he walks with a brace on his right leg, can raise his right arm only to shoulder height and can’t hold anything in his right hand. When conversing, finding words can be difficult. Aphasia has been likened to having words in a filing cabinet and just not being able to retrieve them.
It’s frustrating, Bob said: “Oh, yeah, yeah. But slow down and try again.”
For Hill, singing is easier than speaking. “Beautiful,” she said, before struggling to say more. She started to speak, shook her head after her brain offered the wrong words, started again, then sighed. Then she broke into song: “Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket…” And the lyrics flowed.
Thirty-eight-year-old Anna King has lived with aphasia for 20 years. Three weeks after graduating from Champlain Valley Union High School, with plans to study chemistry at the University of Vermont, King was in a bike accident while going to see her boyfriend on Texas Hill Road in Hinesburg. She doesn’t remember what happened, but the road had recently been graded and her family thinks she may have hit loose gravel and lost control. The accident left her with a broken jaw, a brain injury and hemiparesis, or weakness on one side of her body. She never got to UVM.
“It was kind of lonely,” the Shelburne woman said. “Grieving the loss of myself before. And it never goes away. But it’s just less of a burden — like less of me is held in the past, more I’m able to go forward.”
Therapy has helped, she said. So has the choir.
King works as a guide at Shelburne Museum and as a greeter and cashier at Lowe’s in South Burlington. Her speech is slow and a bit labored but perfectly intelligible. Still, some people seem suspicious, she said: “I think that they think I’m drunk.”
Others assume that people with aphasia have an intellectual disability. Members of the choir said even doctors direct questions to the person who has accompanied them to a visit.
Leary set three goals for the Aphasia Choir: Have fun, exercise brains and educate the public at a free concert each June, Aphasia Awareness Month. On Sunday, choir members with aphasia will introduce songs so audience members can hear what aphasia sounds like. They will relay information they want people to understand: You don’t have to speak loudly when talking to us. Ask yes-or-no questions if you’re having trouble understanding us. Be patient when we’re talking; don’t try to fill in the word we’re looking for. And please address us, not only the people we are with.
When they sing, backed by a five-piece band, no one will be able to tell who has aphasia and who doesn’t.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Musically Speaking | The Aphasia Choir of Vermont helps people with brain injuries find their voice”
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This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2025.
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