Music Heals

By Diane Petryk

Hospital green. Children's ward. The 6-year-old boy with a tracheotomy tube lay motionless. Medical staff couldn't lift his despondency. Kathy Lord and Susan Weber tip-toe in.
A parent nods. Softly, they begin to sing. It was the holiday season, so they chose “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

At first, said Laurel Whitaker of the Brooklyn Children’s Medical Center, the boy watched listlessly.

“But before long one hand came up and he began to snap it to the music, then his other hand came up and he began to clap," she said. "By the time they finished he had both hands over his head and was mouthing words to the song." When the musicians were about to leave, he clasped his hands together and reverently bowed his head and mouthed ‘thank-you.’”

The boy’s reaction wasn’t unusual. Hospitals across the city have seen music’s almost magical power for triggering metamorphosis. Moods lift. Blood pressure falls. Will to live can be brought back. Music -- especially the gentle and loving Lord and Weber style -- can often trump medicine.

Musicians Kathy Lord and Susan Weber, who play guitar and electric bass respectively, had been performing together for more than a dozen years when, one day in 1997, Weber experienced a numbness in her left hand. Her doctor referred her to “the best,” Beth Israel Medical Center’s chief neurosurgeon, Dr. Fred J. Epstein. It turned out that Weber’s problem was transitory, but she sought some way to repay Epstein for his kindness and expertise.

Epstein was also head of the Pediatrics Department at the Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery at Beth Israel and therein lay the answer. Lord and Weber would donate a performance for the hospitalized children. That day, as they sang and strummed for children gathered in the ward’s playroom, miracles began to happen. Depressed kids brightened. Unresponsive faces soon beamed. Some children forgot their pain and picked up tambourines. They sang, they laughed; they were swept from their cares by melodies and harmonies. And the effect lasted long after the duo had gone. Epstein was thrilled with the residual positive effects of the performance. It had actually helped the children heal! He insisted Kathy and Susan return, and soon. The rest is history.

“A fire got lit under us,” said Lord. Before long, they had formed Music That Heals, a non-profit organization to raise money and provide performances for hospitals, nursing homes, homeless shelters, hospices and other groups of people needing their spirits lifted. Lord and Weber, with and without their band of 4 to 6 others, already had a full bookings schedule. They were in demand at colleges, for weddings and church groups, and on cruises. They soon found, however, their Music That Heals gigs were the most satisfying.

Kathy, who grew up in Gravesend, said, when she was young, she couldn’t go near a hospital because seeing sick and suffering people upset her. Now, a rare week will go by when she doesn’t make the rounds in one hospital or another.

“It’s not like I don’t see the tragedy,” she said. “I just don’t take it in. I focus on the gift we have to give.” Sometimes it’s more than music. At the Brooklyn Hospital Center recently, Susan had to catch up with Kathy after being delayed with a 3-year-boy. He had a big IV needle in his arm. “He said it felt better if I held his hand,” she said. At the hospital, Weber, a Bronx native, now of Valley Stream, and Lord, now of Bensonhurst, are familiar faces. They stroll the hall in pediatrics and peek into each room.

“Would you like a song?” Kathy asks. Sometimes the child is alone and the music also alleviates loneliness. When parents are present, they are often surprised at the request and shrug an indifferent “okay.” Then they see how their child perks up and hope the women will sing another.

"How about that Lion King song, or a little Bob Marley?" Kathy strums her guitar and sings. Susan sings and shakes a small egg with little pellets inside that make a soft maracas-like sound. She keeps a supply of the eggs in her bag and gives one to each child so he or she can shake it in time to the music, too, and they get to keep it. In the intensive care unit, a nurse is washing her hands with a weary look on her face. She turns and sees Kathy and Susan and her lips curl upward.

“Listen,” she says to a young boy as the women begin with some Kenny Loggins lyrics: “Christopher Robin and I walked along Under branches lit up by the moon Posing our questions to Owl and Eyeore . . .” The atmosphere in the ICU changes for doctors, parents and patients. A young boy talks about his school and learning to play the guitar himself. In another room, Kathy finds out the young girl would like a sad song. They play Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You.”

“You have to respect what the child wants,” Susan explains. “But nobody is too sick,” she adds. “Some will decline. Often it’s because they’re unfamiliar -- culturally they’ve never seen someone playing in a hospital. We make sure they realize it’s free.” She’s quick to point out she and Kathy are artists and not clinical musical therapists. Where a clinical therapist is limited to certain textbook methodologies, they are free to adapt to the dynamics of each situation.

“Kathy and Susan are so soft in terms of their playfulness that kids let them in even when they won’t let others in,” says Honey Shields, Beth Israel’s director of Child Life Therapy. “Sometimes they’ll follow them down the hall. It’s a form of empowerment for them.” “We use our intuition and our sensitivities,” Kathy says. “We express feeling in song.” That’s important, even in situations where it’s clear that neither medicine nor music will cure.

At Beth Israel once, they encountered a child with a brain tumor, near death. Many of her family members were gathered in her room. None of them spoke English, but Susan, with her perfect Spanish, was able to learn that the family did want them to play. Softly, they launched into Guantanamera, LaBamba, Cielito Lindo and more. Susan learned that the dying girl loved music. As they played, her family began to sing to her.

“Suddenly there were about 20 people singing and crying and it was beautiful,” Kathy said. “It was a bonding experience for the family and a poignant send off. And I think the girl heard it. I think she got it on some level, the love they had for her they were able to transmit in vibrations of sound. I think she got it.”

Another time they were in a neo-natal unit where a physician was working on a baby the size of one’s palm,” Kathy recalled. The baby was just a few days old. The doctor nodded for them to sing and they did, with several family members around the tiny bed. After awhile, the baby stopped breathing. “The doctor said to us, ‘At least she got to hear a song before she died.’”

In another type of venue, Lord and Weber can reveal more of their rock ’n roll roots. Recently they played for a group of about 30 autistic and developmentally challenged youngsters and young adults at Holy Name Church’s basement rectory in Prospect Park. Able to forget their handicaps for a while, the youths danced exuberantly for more than hour to tunes like “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Hot, Hot, Hot,” and “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” They had a great time, but it was Susan and Kathy who were grateful.

“We were born to do this. We are grateful to be able to give them our gifts,” Weber said. “That’s the satisfaction. If I died today I would feel my life had been worthwhile.” Now in its 10th year, Music That Heals has grown to include about 15 additional musicians who tour the same types of venues. But the organization is still small.

“I’m a musician, not a fundraiser,” Kathy says. Still, she’s also a runner and that led her to arrange an annual 5K Run to help raise funds. The event is held in Prospect Park each Fall. It has grown from about 80 participants the first year to about 200 in 2004. Last year it raised $8,000. Matty Heavey, owner of Circles Restaurant, always donates his restaurant space for a party after race day.

Some of the children who heard Lord and Weber when they were ill, inevitably turn up for the race, giving testimonials to the power of music in general and Lord and Weber in particular. ”Chase all the clouds from the sky Back to the days of Christopher Robin Back to the ways of Christopher Robin and Pooh.”