'Therefore I am...' 1: 'The Appointment' by Ian Wilson, composer published on 2015-11-23T13:03:22Z 'Therefore I am…' (2012) This is the only purely instrumental work of my three Tallaght Hospital (Dublin) projects. I spent time observing and interacting with dementia patients and this six-movement work resulted, each one reflecting a different aspect of dealing with dementia. 'The Appointment' tries to capture the tension and anxiety of seeing a doctor when dementia is the issue, and the 2nd movement, 'Face, velvet, red (memory test)', reflects the difficulties of repeating things exactly when suffering from dementia, especially during doctors’ infamous memory tests. Utermohlen was a very good artist who developed dementia – his work, like the third movement ('Utermohlen Variations'), shows his gradual decline. 'Frontotemporal' is one part of the brain affected by dementia, and which can cause obsessive behaviour (hence the repeated tune). 'Slow & sweet (& soft' was how a daughter reminded her father to treat her mother, the latter having developed dementia at a young age, and so it’s a tender piece. The final movement takes the jazz standard 'Autumn leaves' and uses it to reflect the gradual disintegration of a dementia sufferer’s personality as it dissembles through time – although sometimes the sufferer can carry on in their own world quite contentedly, as the saxophonist does here. The performers are Cathal Roche, saxophone; Ken Rice, violin; Joachim Roewer, viola; and Malachy Robinson, double bass. Genre Chamber