The Trembling Troubadours, a choir comprised of singers with Parkinson’s disease, sang “The Star Spangled Banner” before the Chattanooga Lookouts’ July 24 game.
Since the creation of the Trembling Troubadours, Katherine Goforth Elverd—director of music therapy at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga—had a goal of having the group perform the national anthem before a Chattanooga Lookouts minor league baseball game.
This past Sunday, that goal was realized.
On July 24, the Trembling Troubadours, a choir comprised of singers with Parkinson’s disease, sang “The Star Spangled Banner” before the Lookouts’ contest against the Tennessee Smokies.
Joining the nearly two dozen singers were Elverd and her mother, Kathy Goforth—the area business development director at Life Care Centers of America.
The mother/daughter duo created the Trembling Troubadours in 2019, shortly after Elverd joined UTC.
Elverd said the idea of the choir itself is very much rooted in the fundamentals and principles of music therapy.
She explained that music therapists use music as a tool to facilitate interaction and achieve non-musical outcomes.
“The great thing about music therapy is that it is related to music. It’s enjoyable. It’s soothing. It’s pleasurable,” she said, “but we’re working on these functions that someone may have difficulty engaging in. They may be doing speech therapy or occupational physical therapy that isn’t as fun and enjoyable.”
An example of that would be in the pediatric medical setting, where music is used to help decrease pain and increase relaxation.
“Or with Trembling Troubadours, it’s our Parkinson’s choir—where I’m going to use music to help with increasing breath supports, vocal volume and articulation,” Elverd said. “The way the music is used can be both actively and passively with the clients. It just depends on what their needs are.
“What makes music therapy music therapy is it’s an individualized relationship between the client, the therapist and the music.”
She said the supportive setting of the Trembling Troubadours creates group cohesiveness and a sense of belonging. The Troubadours meets every Friday at the Life Care Center of Hixson, beginning each session with social engagement before working on breath support, vocal volume and articulation.
Each Friday session includes breathing techniques in which participants are simply working on breathing in, breathing out, engaging their abdominal muscles and diaphragm to help with that breath control, she said.
“I then integrate it in with vocal warmups where I’m challenging them with different sounds, different speeds or tempo of which we’re singing,” Elverd said, “then we have a standard repertoire that we rehearse and then ideally perform.
“For Trembling Troubadours and anyone receiving music therapy, there is no preconceived notion that they need to know how to sing or read music, play an instrument, or even know how to write music.”
Katherine Goforth Elverd has been the director of music therapy at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga since 2019. Photo by Angela Foster.
Elverd was recently awarded a Tennessee Arts Commission Arts Build Communities (ABC) grant for her work with the Trembling Troubadours. As part of the final report, she was asked to share the project’s impact.
“I thought, ‘Their words are better than my words,’ so I asked them if any of them wanted to volunteer to send me a couple of sentences about the impact of Trembling Troubadours on them,” Elverd recalled.
Six volunteered to write about the group’s impact, including John Rudat.
“I like the social, supportive aspect. Conversations among members are commonly about things unrelated to our affliction, but we do share our experiences regarding the disease and various treatments we are having. Singing about silly love songs makes me smile. But singing our national anthem on July 24, 2022, before the Lookouts game, simply makes me proud,” wrote Rudat, who has been singing in choruses for 50-plus years.
“My speech and volume are affected, which is common to those with Parkinson’s, but not when I am singing. The breathing exercises remind us that we must breathe from the diaphragm and not the throat. Every session starts with exercises, except personally, it makes me snap-crackle-and pop when we do the head rotations.”
Rudat and the Trembling Troubadours use their singing as a way to offset the symptoms of Parkinson’s.
Pre-COVID, Trembling Troubadours were doing quarterly concerts for a limited crowd. Elverd said these concerts were focused on advocacy and education for Parkinson’s disease and the use of music therapy in its treatment.
“The goal of every Trembling Troubadour is to use their voice,” she said. “As long as they’re using their voice, their goal is achieved. It is a byproduct that we actually sound really nice.
“We have a wide representation of the disease process. You can tell that there are some you’d never know that have Parkinson’s, and there are others that it’s very evident—whether it’s in their speech or their physical movements. But our mission of going out and sharing is centered around just advocacy and education.
“From day one, in 2019, my goal for this group was to sing the national anthem at the Lookouts game.”
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When the fall semester begins, the UTC music therapy program begins its fourth year.
This coming academic year, for the first time, the program will have a representation of every classification of undergraduate students.
“Currently, we have 25 students in the program,” Elverd said. “Our idea is to bring in 10 per year. We’re focused on quality rather than quantity. We want to make sure that we’re ensuring that our students are educated, knowledgeable and clinically trained.”
As the program grows student-wise, it also grows with staff.
“As director, I wear many hats,” Elverd said. “I administrate the program. I do all of the academic teaching and I’ve also been wearing the clinical hat most of the time.”
In July, Christina Watson was brought on as clinical coordinator.
Elverd said Watson has worked in various settings, directed a national roster internship, presented at state, regional and national levels, and holds positions on state, regional and national committees within the American Music Therapy Association.
“I’m very excited to have a clinical coordinator here in a full-time capacity who brings in a wealth of knowledge, clinical training and experiences with an emphasis on working with students in the clinical setting both at the internship and practicum level,” Elverd said. “I think it’s only going to enhance what we do here because there’s a level of continuity that happens in the academic setting and then will be transferred into the clinical setting. I have no doubt that she will do a fabulous job.”
Since the creation of the Trembling Troubadours in 2019, Katherine Goforth Elverd (front row, far right) said her goal for the group was to sing the national anthem at a Lookouts game.
