SALT LAKE CITY — Jana Lauer's fingers plucked the fat strings of her upright bass as her head rocked to and fro in four-four time with a broad smile. She gave a toe-tapping performance that morning while sitting in with the band The Free Range Chickens.

Still, much of the audience barely lifted a finger. Lauer, undeterred, kept on playing and afterwards spoke glowingly of these audiences.

Janna Lauer is executive director of Heart and Soul, a group that brings music and other performing arts to nursing homes, hospitals, prisons and facilities like the Federal Heights Rehab Center, where Lauer played that morning.

Heart and Soul began 18 years ago when Lauer's elderly mother, Verla Jenson, had multiple strokes, fell and broke her hip , forcing her to move into a nursing home.

"It was stark in its loneliness and isolation," Lauer recalled. "All the little ladies, mostly, and some gentlemen would sit at their doors and look at that front door waiting for someone to come through it, for something to happen."

Lauer's brother, Doug Jenson, had been living in San Francisco and knew about the group, Bread and Roses, founded by Joan Baez's sister, Mimi Farina. It brought the performing arts to these underserved populations. He suggested starting a similar organization in Utah. Verla was depressed, but when she heard the live music, her mood changed.

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"It was like a light bulb would go on when we would bring music in to my mom," Lauer said.

"Even though she couldn't remember all the details of her day-to-day life, she'd remember all the words, all the lyrics."

It was Verla who originally brought music to Janna and Doug. During the Depression, Verla's brother bought a violin from a man wandering through town and she began to play the instrument. Years later, she made sure all her kids got music lessons.

"We had a lot of music in our family," Lauer said. "Dancing and music and singing in the car on the way to grandma's house."

There were also piano duets of "Heart and Soul."

"It just clicked," Lauer said. "We knew that Heart and Soul would be the name of the organization because it spoke to what we were doing."

That morning at the rehab center, Lauer and the Free Range Chickens performed everything from "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" to a lively "Texas Cookin.'"

If you watched carefully, you could see wheelchair-bound audience members waiving hands, tapping toes and quietly singing along — connecting with the music.

"When you get older and have dementia for whatever reason," Lauer said, "the brain forgets things in different ways and you might forget the names of your children and you might forget all of the facts, but the right side of your brain remembers songs. It remembers music."

"You might remember every single word to Ragtime Cowboy Joe and not know the basics of your life anymore," she said. "You remember all those songs and they bring joy to you."

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