News:

The Beat Goes On earns 2025 Best Practice Award from the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services and the Commonwealth Council on Aging! Read more about it here!

2025-2026 Season

If you are interested in joining us this coming Fall, please complete this form to be added to the email list OR email joculligan@vt.edu.

No audition required! Open to all!

Interested in learning more about our choir? Check out the videos and articles below.

Rehearsal Schedule/Information

Rehearsals will include about 30 minutes of social time followed by about 60 minutes of singing rehearsal. Setlist for last season included multi-genre songs that are songs about music! Below is our setlist from last season on Spotify.

The Beat Goes On started in Fall 2023 with a start-up grant from the Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology. The Beat Goes On, is a community choir project aims to grow the Town-Gown relationship between the Virginia Tech community and our older adults population in Blacksburg, Virginia, with a big data twist.

This choir is specifically designed to invite persons experiencing cognitive change (usually due to a form of dementia) and their caregivers to engage in choir singing together with students, faculty and staff from VT, along with other members of the community. Singing in a choir has a wide range of physiological benefits, such as improving breathing, posture and muscle regulating heart rate, supporting a healthy immune system, helping symptoms of some chronic diseases and overall improving status of someone’s physical health.

Have any other questions or comments? Email joculligan@vt.edu.