Daniella Brahms of Easthampton is still, her eyes tightly closed as she sits back in her hospital bed, ukulele music filling the room.
Pat Kapitzky of Florence, a retired music teacher, is leading the strumming as six ukulele players crowded around the bed softly sing: “Countryyyy roooad, take me home to the place I belong…”
Brahms, 39, is bathed in sunlight streaming in from a big window as she listens. A bag of clear liquid hangs over her head, attached to an IV in her right arm. When the song is finished, she opens her eyes which are filled with tears.
“Perfect song, thank you,” she says, wiping her face. “…It’s exactly what I needed.”
This is the first of 11 rooms the band visited at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton on a recent Monday evening. All volunteers, the musicians have been making a two-hour visit to the hospital monthly for the past three months to play for patients. They are part of the hospital’s “Sacred Music for Healing” program, which aspires to bring joy through music to those who are suffering, says Joe Blumenthal, the leader of the group and the owner of the music store Downtown Sounds in Northampton.
The ukulele group is the latest addition to the “Sacred Music for Healing” program Blumenthal helped start at Cooley Dickinson almost a year ago with an a cappella group called the Journey Home Singers. Those 30-plus members sing for patients in the hospital’s hospice and home nursing care program with a repertoire that includes sacred music from different traditions, lullabies, a few oldies and songs in other languages. Since its start, the group has received praise and appreciation from both the patients and the hospital staff, Blumenthal says.
“We are here to provide a little sunshine in an otherwise cloudy day,” he says.
Aside from asking the patients if they may play for them, the musicians don’t ask any questions, including How are you feeling?
“We are making people forget about their pain for a short time and bring them to a better place,” says one of the ukulele players, Sandy Jodrie, 68, of Northampton. “It’s been really wonderful to see, to watch the faces of the patients and see how they experience the music.”
The musicians, all of them amateurs, arrive in the early evening, gathering in an empty office room, where they pass around a tuner and tinker with their instruments. After a brief practice session, they make their way to one of the hospital’s units, passing through a maze of hallways and stairwells. Then Blumenthal speaks to one of the nurses on the floor. The nurse checks with the patients on the unit and gives him a list of rooms to visit.
Blumenthal knocks on a door and pokes his head into the room: “Hello, I’m here with a group of singing ukulele players,” he announces. “They would like to sing a song for you.”
Like Brahms, Marion Lilley of Northampton, gives him the go-ahead, and the rest of the band comes inside. It’s a bit cramped in the room as they gather around the bed and set up a music stand with a few sheets of notes.
Lilley, 73, sits up in bed, singing and clapping along to the song “Has Anybody Seen My Girl.”
She asks for another song and the band sings “Chapel of Love.” Lilley is smiling when they finish. “Thank you, that really brightened up my day.” she says.
On their rounds, the band cycles through a list of songs, many of them upbeat, like the country standard, “Keep on The Sunny Side.”
Hospital staff is pleased that the program helps enhance patients’ stay at Cooley Dickinson.
“Joe has really ensured that all this works well,” said Robin Kline, the hospital’s director of volunteers who helped start the program.
It isn’t uncommon for patients and their family members to have strong emotional reactions to the music, adds Carole Bull, pastoral care coordinator, who also helped launch “Sacred Music for Healing.”
“We’ve had visiting family members express sheer delight,” says Bull.
While most can attest to the fact that music can make people feel good, neuroscientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute in Canada have discovered that peoples’ brains release the pleasure neurotransmitter dopamine when they listen to music they enjoy. “I think some folks are plain drawn to music and I am one of those people,” says one of the band member, Will Freedberg, 74, a physician from Northampton.
He isn’t sure about music altering people’s brain chemistry, but it certainly doesn’t hurt, he says.
“Most folks seem to say thank you,” he says.
Like Freedberg, the players, many of whom are retired, also enjoy it. The trips to the hospital give them a good opportunity to practice, says Jodrie, who is a retired teacher.
“I was thrilled because I always wanted to be a music therapist. I thought it would fulfill a desire that I had to play music in a helping way,” she says.
Her husband had bought her a ukulele for her 63rd birthday five years ago and she joined the Northampton-based ukulele troupe, AEIOUkes, shortly after. Also led by Blumenthal, that group is essentially a club for people to come together and play. There are more than 30 people who typically show up to jam sessions, she says, but it is relatively informal and people tend to come and go.
She and a few others took Blumenthal up on his invitation to form the hospital group three months ago.
“I just felt like I wanted to give back to the hospital and the people who were in the hospital,” she says. “I thought it would be a moving experience, and it has been.”
Lisa Spear can be reached at Lspear@gazettenet.com
Those interested in volunteering with the Sacred Music for Healing program at Cooley Dickinson Hospital can visit the volunteer section of Cooley’s website. There is an application there: https://www.cooleydickinson.org/volunteer/
Also, AEIOUkes welcomes newcomers. They play at the Forbes Library, 20 West St, Northampton, on Saturdays during the school year from 10 a.m. to noon almost every week. These gatherings will resume Sept. 9. The group plans to add a second meeting time later in the year. For more information or to be added to the group’s mailing list, email musician@downtownsounds.com or call 586-0998.