Musicians Improvise Masks for Wind Instruments to Keep the Band Together
Above photo: Solomon Keim wears a custom-designed mask during rehearsal at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana. (Chris Bergin for KHN) Trombonist Jerrell Charleston loves the give-and-take of jazz, the creativity of riffing off other musicians. But as he looked toward his sophomore year at Indiana University, he feared that steps to […]
Aiding People with Alzheimer’s Through the Arts
While people with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia gradually lose the ability to speak and to remember, the arts can help ground them, keep them engaged and let them express themselves. “The arts enrich the quality of life of individuals with memory loss and provide them with a sense of purpose and meaning,” […]
Sharing the Healing Power of Music
If music heals the soul, then patients at some Chicago hospitals are in luck. Award-winning nonprofit Sharing Notes organizes volunteer musicians to bring hospital patients weekly interactive performances of classical, folk, jazz and other styles of music. Allegra Montanari, Sharing Notes’ founder and executive director, wanted to share her love of music with others after […]
Music in the O.R.
While you’re lying sedated on the operating room table, your surgeon may be rocking out. Music is played in the operating theater 62 to 72 percent of the time, according to a study in medical journal The BMJ. “Around 80 percent of theater staff report that music benefits communication between team members, reducing anxiety levels […]
Music can be good medicine
Jan Stouffer, who works as a board certified music therapist at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, uses music to help control patients’ pain and anxiety, to ease their adjustment to the hospital setting, and to promote physical rehabilitation. “Health is a dance back and forth between physical and emotional needs, so the […]
