gram has produced a HeartStrings Toolkit cancer there were no music therapists on as an aid to other orchestras hoping to create staff at the University of Pittsburgh Meditheir own health and wellness programs.) cal Center. In 2000, she and the orchestra began advocating for music therapists in hospitals. Children’s Hospital was the first Human Communication of UPMC’s facilities to hire such specialAnother Getty grant recipient, the Knoxists, and Brill says that it’s grown since then. ville Symphony Orchestra in Tennessee, Music therapists are a key component of the owes its Music and Wellness program to PSO’s Music and Wellness program, which Music Director Lucas Richman. During Brill says now has the active participation his time as assistant and then resident conof about 30 PSO musicians—not just at ductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony, RichChildren’s Hospital but at UPMC Shadyman had been inspired by that orchestra’s side, at the veterans’ hospital in Pittsburgh, Music and Wellness program, and he reat a school for persons with permanent dissolved to establish something similar in abilities, and at the local Gilda’s Club cancer Knoxville soon after arriving there in 2003. support center. One of the steps he took was to invite “We send musicians out as individuals or Penny Brill to coach musicians from his in groups,” says Suzanne Perrino, the PSO’s new orchestra in some of the techniques vice president of education and strategic imshe had learned in Pittsburgh. plementation. “They participate in our serThe Knoxville Symphony program startvice-exchange program: for eight individual ed out with string quartet performances in services they get an additional week of vathe lobbies and waiting areas of that city’s cation,” she explains, referring to the musiUniversity of Tennessee Medical Center, cians’ contract with the orchestra. Brill has says violinist Sean Claire. “But there was done presentations with music therapists in one extra violinist who wasn’t needed in the numerous places in addition to her frequent quartet, and I wanted an opportunity to do participation in the Music and Wellness one-on-one work with patients.” Claire has program’s chamber music activities. These worked in various patient areas of the hospihave not been limited to the Pittsburgh area. tal as a strolling solo musician, as have other Last fall during the orchestra’s European members of the KSO’s nineteen-member tour, Brill and PSO cellist Adam Liu played string core. for patients at St. Anna Children’s Hospital Claire had long been interested in muin Vienna. As of mid-February the orchessic’s power to heal and promote well-being. tra was hoping for a return visit During his teenage years, as In partnering to that hospital this year during an incessantly practicing violin with healthcare its late-summer European tour. student, he once brought his organizations, “Penny is an expert in doing instrument to a chiropractor orchestras are hospital visits in different group appointment and was playing linking their settings,” says PSO Director outside the building, but within musicians’ of Education and Community earshot of the patient ahead of expertise Programs Gloria Mou. Based him. “After a little while the with that of largely on Brill’s experience, doctor came out and told me, doctors, music Mou and Jessica Ryan, the or‘The patient I just saw had an therapists, and chestra’s manager of education energy blockage, and I couldn’t hospital staff. and community programs, have get it to go away until you startcreated a handbook of “dos and don’ts” for ed playing.’ ” musicians who are interested in similar visClaire has similar stories to tell about its. And with help from its Getty grant, the UT Medical Center, where his work has PSO will soon launch a Music and Wellness included visits to the Neonatal Intensive website that incorporates the handbook— Care Unit. Playing for an infant who was along with significant input from medical recovering from major intestinal surgery professionals and administrators—and will and had to remain in a sitting position, he serve as a field-wide resource for orchestras “happened to move to her right side, and sponsoring programs in the health and wellshe followed me with her gaze. It was the ness area. (Wisconsin’s Madison Symphony first time she had ever turned her head to Orchestra has taken a similarly collegial apthe right. The [physical] therapists had proach: its Getty-funded HeartStrings probeen trying to get her to do that for weeks. americanorchestras.org
Music & Health: The Getty Commitment
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n November 2012 the League of American Orchestras announced the first round of Getty Education and Community Investment Grants in support of innovative educational programs and community partnerships at orchestras. The 2012-13 season grants were part of a three-year, $1.5 million re-granting program from the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. Of the 22 grantees, nine are being funded for programs in the area of health and wellness: Detroit Symphony Orchestra, MI Hartford Symphony Orchestra, CT Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, TN Madison Symphony Orchestra, WI New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, NJ Phoenix Symphony, AZ Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, PA Portland Symphony Orchestra, ME St. Louis Symphony, MO A session entitled “Health and Wellness Programs: Learning from the Getty Orchestras” is scheduled for June 20 at the League’s National Conference in St. Louis.
“There was another instance that brought home for me the vibrational impact of music on a psyche that’s upset,” Claire continues. “An infant born to a drug-addicted mother—three months old, maybe five months—was constantly fussing and crying; the nurses were never able to get through and communicate with him. As I played for him he calmed down and was quiet. The piece ended, and he started getting squirmy and fussy. I started something else and he calmed down again. You could see the layers of cloudiness falling from his eyes as he found the source of the sound and focused on it. At the end the nurse asked him if he liked it, and he actually responded. It was the first time he had ever responded to a human communication.” Eunsoon Corliss, the KSO’s assistant principal violist, has played in the quartet concerts at UT Medical Center, but she also strolls with her instrument in the patient areas, playing such things as Stephen Foster melodies and sometimes giving bedside performances. “One patient opened his door
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