NEW YORK – American singer Tony Bennett revealed on Monday that he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016 and that the disease is progressing, although he does not suffer from common symptoms such as disorientation or episodes of terror.

Bennett, 94, stars in a report in the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) magazine in which his family and doctors explain how he is stimulating his brain through musical performance, the Mediterranean diet and the exercise.

His wife, Susan, told the magazine that the legendary jazz singer began to show signs of decline two years after the diagnosis, while recording an album with Lady Gaga that will be released this spring and could be the last of his career. .

It is a second part of his work “Cheek to Cheek” from 2014 and was recorded between 2018 and early 2020, when Bennett gave his last concert before covid-19 arrived, at the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank (New Jersey).

“He’s doing a lot of things, at 94, that a lot of people without dementia can’t do. He really is the symbol of hope for someone with a cognitive disease,” said Gayatri Devi, his neurologist.

Devi encouraged Bennett’s relatives to continue singing and performing for as long as possible until the coronavirus pandemic hit, which brought an inevitable slowdown: “It kept him in place and also stimulated his brain in an important way,” he said.

The doctor highlighted the negative effect of isolation on cognitive ability and the inability to carry out therapeutic activities for many patients during the crisis, so in Bennett’s case he recommended that he continue rehearsing with his pianist twice a week.

“The powerful feelings released by music can connect listeners to their deep emotional memories, even those inaccessible to the conscious mind,” the article notes.

The report details how Bennett reconnects with those memories in a rehearsal, performing hits like “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” (1950) or “Fly Me To The Moon” (1965), to which his wife assures that singing “has saved his life many times. ”

“I miss many things about him. Because he is not the old Tony. But when he sings, he is the old Tony,” he declared.

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