Musicians on Call Brings Live Music to Patients' Bedsides

As part of Make a Difference Week, Steve Adubato sits down with Michael Solomon, Co-Founder of Musicians on Call and Pete Griffin, President of Musicians on Call, to discuss the non-profit organization’s mission to bring live and recorded music to the bedsides of patients in healthcare facilities.

4/30/18 #2134

Excerpt:

"bring musicians into the hospitals and nursing homes and hospice, and walk them room to room, to play right at the bedsides of patients. So when we're in the hospital, we're seeing patients fight everyday, and we're seeing their families, you know, show strength every single day. And when our volunteers, musicians, and guide go into the hospital, they're part of that same fight. They're fighting to make people's lives better. These guys are doing good stuff. They're right here in the studio. Michael Solomon is Co-Founder of Musicians On Call. And you just saw this guy on camera, in that video. Pete Griffin, President of Musicians On Call. How you doing guys? Excellent. Doing well. Musicians On Call is? A non profit organization that brings musicians into healthcare facilities, and brings them to the bedsides of patients. How did you start it? Why? So, I lost my girlfriend, Kristen Ann Carr, to a rare cancer called sarcoma, about 24 years ago. And we set up a foundation in her name to do research for a cure and treatment for that disease. And as an offshoot of that, her mother, who's Bruce Springsteen's co-manager, brought in some musicians to a healthcare facility, and they played in a big recreation room. I was there for that, and thought, "Oh, I can do this." I was a young aspiring music manager at the time. So I brought in some of my clients, into recreation rooms. And it was lovely, we would have anywhere between 7 and 20 people in the room. It was great. And one night, a nurse came and said that there's a couple people who are too sick to come down the hall, and "will you go to their rooms?" And that was the night where the magic began. Because what we saw at the bedside of a patient and their family was really magical and palpable, and like nothing I had ever seen or experienced before. How did they get you? You know, I was... I spent most of my career at MTV, and was working on MTV's social campaigns, and a lot of the artists that I was working with on these campaigns were already involved with Musicians On Call. And the stories they would tell me about the impact that this program had was pretty powerful and one of the stories that they would often share, and I've heard this from all different types of artists, is that no matter where the artist was in their career, it was a great way to kind of reset and remember why you got involved with music in the first place..."