For the second year running, EUYO musicians travelled to Turku, Finland to participate in a groundbreaking project at the intersection of music, healthcare, and technology. For more than twenty years, Professor Emeritus Seppo Soinila has led research on the role of music in healing damaged brains, work that is now joined by virtual reality-based technology on the initiative of concert pianist Pauli Kari. This new way of accessing music through virtual glasses enables people with brain injury, stroke and dementia to experience a concert even if their health does not allow them to go to a concert hall, and a particular focus of Soinila’s research team is now how to implement a virtual music experience and add value to traditional rehabilitation programmes.

Having already visited Turku in December 2023, we performed once again in two Kaskenmäki Home Concerts (10th Anniversary Season), and made 360° recordings for use with Kari’s VR glasses. EUYO musicians David Ruiz Del Canto (Spain, Violin), Anja Kralj (Slovenia, Violin), Hanna Maria Semper (Estonia, Viola), and Mark Fliderman Kuligin (Spain, Cello) also gave an informal concert in the Turku University Hospital Cafeteria, played for patients on the neurology ward, and visited Aurinkosäätiö hoivakoti in nearby Naantali.

To discuss music’s impact on neurological rehabilitation from scientific, therapeutic, technological, and artistic perspectives, a press conference at Turku University Hospital on Friday, 13 December at 9:30 took place, with: Pavel Zaitsev, PhD researcher at the University of Turku (Department of Clinical Sciences); Pauli Kari; EUYO Executive & Artistic Director Marshall Marcus; Nurse/Tyks Neurokeskus Johanna Järvinen, and Clinical Nurse Specialist Riitta Danielsson-Ojala. The media event also featured a short performance by our EUYO musicians.