In Argentina hospital, music cures the soul
Picture a hospital: the bustle of harried doctors and nurses, time dragging for lonely patients, and the pervasive sadness of a place for the sick and dying. And suddenly, there’s music — live, classical music, the sounds of masters like Johannes Brahms and Giuseppe Verdi — to make it all a bit more bearable. These unannounced flash concerts are staged by an organisation called Music for the Soul, and on this particular day at Alvarez Hospital in Buenos Aires the artists are 70 musicians, a choir, two sopranos and a tenor.
They perform for free, and most of the time with fellow musicians they meet for the first time right then and there.
The network was created in Argentina five years ago and now operates in 10 countries across three continents.
The organisation boasts over 2,000 performers and has given some 300 concerts that have inspired similar programmes in Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Italy, France and Israel.
The force behind it all was a young orchestra flutist named Eugenia Rubio, who died of cancer at the age of 24. She asked colleagues to play for her as doctors tried to keep her comfortable in the final months of her life.
After Rubio died, “we decided to carry on with 10 musicians and today there are more than 2,000 of us”, said Jorge Bergero, founder of the project and cellist for orchestra of Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires.
The organisation’s web page allows musicians to volunteer and hospitals to request concerts. The only pre-requisite is that the musicians be professionals.
“The musicians come because they want to. They do not get paid. No one is looking at their watch,” said Bergero. Concerts are held on Mondays, the day that orchestras usually have off.
In the main lobby of the hospital in a lower middle class neighbourhood, applause and shouts of “bravo!” ring out with the last notes of Verdi’s La Traviata.
The idea is not to disturb the routine of the hospital but that is a tough task when the walls are reverberating with the lively sounds of Brahms’ Hungarian Dances. Some find it irritating but most people are fascinated. “Music has a healing effect because it is related to spirituality, and in patients who are approaching the end of their lives it allows them to reconnect with joy, happiness and emotion. It is absolutely therapeutic,” said Ana Maria Soriano, director of palliative care in the hospital’s cancer ward.