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Since founding Sounds Good/Good Memories Choirs in 2016, Sandy and Jonathan Miller have wondered, “How can we document in a rigorous way what our singers are saying about the impact on their lives of choir singing?” The answer to that question is the focus of the March 20 Music and the Mind presentation. The Sounds Good/Good Memories organization has partnered with Northwestern Medicine’s Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease in a research project on music and the mind. Join us for an update on this research. Discover the mission, work and joys of Sounds Good/Good Memories Choirs, serving over 350 older adults in nine non-audition choirs in Chicago and the suburbs. This program is part of a wider Chicago Area Villages collaboration, the Aging Brain and Body Series.

About the presenters: The Village Chicago Trailblazers from 2023, Jonathan and Sandy Miller!

Co-founder of Sounds Good/Good Memories Choirs and the director of the Good Memories Choir program, clinical psychologist Rev. Dr. Sandy Siegel Miller has been in private practice for more than 30 years. The “keeper of the culture” at Sounds Good Choir, Sandy is the guiding spirit of the organization’s programs for people with memory loss and their care partners. She works on all facets of program strategy and pioneered the online sing-along program during the COVID lockdown in 2020. Sandy coordinates a team of neurology researchers who are studying the impact of choral singing on older adults. She is a deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago and serves as ordained clergy at Church of Holy Nativity in Clarendon Hills.

Jonathan Miller, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Sounds Good/Good Memories Choirs, Jonathan conducts singers at all skill levels, from beginners to professionals. He’s been involved in the Chicago Children’s Choir (now Uniting Voices Chicago), His Majestie’s Clerkes (now Bella Voce) and the Harwood Early Music Ensemble. In 1993, Jonathan founded the virtuoso ensemble Chicago a cappella and served as its artistic director for 27 years. Jon is a former board member of Chorus America and has been a grants panelist for the Illinois Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. Awards include the Botto Award for Innovative Action and the Entrepreneurial Zeal from Chorus America. Jonathan has composed or arranged more than 200 works for choir. A leader in Jewish choral and worship music, he is a high-holiday cantor at Congregation Rodfei Zedek in Hyde Park and is on the Musical Shabbat worship team at West Suburban Temple Har Zion in River Forest.