Vital Sounds Initiative: Virtual Bedside Concerts
“There are very few things in this world [that can] transcend time and place, and [...] music is one of those things. It adds a level of humanity to a situation that I think this virus has taken away.”
— -Dr. Rachel Easterwood (The New York Times)
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https://www.pmhu.org/vital-soundsOVERVIEW
Since early April 2020, PMHU has been offering its programming through one-on-one concerts via video live stream platforms to society's most isolated and vulnerable: patients hospitalized across the country.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
With the launch of the Vital Sounds Initiative, PMHU has offered over $100,000 in musician support to arts organizations and ensembles around the country in order to lay the groundwork for a sustainable national network of artists united in using the Arts in service of patient rehabilitation, while leveraging collective resources to create a scalable initiative greater than the sum of any individual efforts. The initiative aims to address two concurrent sources of desperation affecting two seemingly unrelated groups: isolated hospitalized patients and their caregivers, and performing artists who have had their livelihoods threatened by the shutdown of live arts programming through the pandemic.