A Performance For The Ages Young Musicians Benefit From Appreciative Audience In Nursing Homes

As Susan Chan’s strong, slender fingers send Chopin’s prelude in A to the back of the room, an elderly woman begins to hum.

She knows this one, and she smiles, recalling the melody.

On Nov. 14 Chan will perform her debut recital in New York’s famed Carnegie Hall. But on this day, the Washington State University associate professor of music and her student, Hsiao-Ling Lo, are playing for a small but appreciative after-dinner crowd at the Good Samaritan Nursing Home in Moscow.

Helen Burns notices the strength in Chan’s accomplished fingers, and recalls that she used to play too.

“I’d rather listen now,” said Burns, 93. “We really enjoy this.”

Death visits nursing homes all too often. Music doesn’t stop by often enough.

The positive impact student performers have on the elderly and infirm at nursing homes and care centers is clear - residents love it.

But Chan has found there’s also an academic benefit for students who give such performances. Those who played in the nonjudgmental atmosphere of a care center were able to relax more easily and tap into that reservoir of passion and authenticity during other, more stressful performances.

“Music can be very academic but at the same time, there are so many other benefits from the power of music,” Chan said. “It’s one of the few avenues that you can reach out to anybody and anybody can benefit.”

Many music majors arrive at college having only played to win, show off or please their parents. Their nerves are rattled during formal performances. They’re paralyzed by the imaginary negative attitudes of audiences, who they are convinced can hear every wrong note.

Inside a care center, there are no scales and arpeggios, no sight reading or memorization tests. There are no judges to impress or parents to please, just men and women thankful to see a young face, hear a pretty tune, have something different in their day.

“In this atmosphere, playing music is a giving thing, so it comes truly from the heart,” Chan said. “My goal is to have students bring that same feeling to their other performances.”

That’s exactly what happened with 24-year-old WSU piano major Hsiao-Ling Lo, who came to the United States to study four years ago from Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

Lo used to be terribly distracted by outside noises when she performed. Then she began playing at nursing homes, where residents, often very ill, were sometimes wheeled out in beds or chairs next to her piano.

She learned to tune out the machines, monitors and wheezing of patients who weren’t well. “Every time I play here, I’m more relaxed.”

Chan required students to keep journals of their experiences. Lo reported that she enjoyed playing more, felt more relaxed at the keys, and could tap into those feelings during other performances.

Like Lo, it was the first time inside a nursing home for many students, and the sobering experience triggered new feelings of compassion for the elderly. “I want them to not just learn the discipline but how to become a better person,” said Chan.

The project is supported with a $750 grant from WSU’s Community Service-Learning Center, a program that’s part of a growing nationwide higher education movement to promote public service and community involvement in college students’ academic experiences.

“At any given time there are anywhere from 50 to 100 faculty incorporating some form of community-based learning into their curriculum,” said Melanie Brown, community service program director at WSU’s center.

Psychology professor Maureen Schmitter-Edgecombe’s students worked with local Alzheimer’s patients last year while studying the aging process. Architecture professor Mike Owen’s classes have completed several community projects in Pullman - including a park and pedestrian shelter.

Chan based her music service learning project on her own experience at Yale after first arriving in the United States from Hong Kong in 1988. There, she began playing regularly at the Jewish Hospice in nearby Connecticut, where residents - some very sick - would gather around her piano to listen.

“I could feel that it was an appreciative atmosphere and the music was absorbed right away, there was no judgment, no resistance,” Chan said.

“It was very special, and I wanted my students to have that same experience.”

In Hong Kong, Chan recalled how her sick mother had enjoyed listening to her compete in the solo finals of the Hong Kong Schools Music Festival when she was 18. Bedridden in the late stages of cancer, Chan’s mother listened as the competition was broadcast over a Hong Kong radio station. She died three months later.

But Chan’s own study of music as therapy for easing pain and anxiety was only just beginning.

Studies have shown live music works better than recorded music. Chan and her student, Lo, recognize that the moment their fingers touch the piano keys.

“When I see these people, I feel I want to give them my best, and that takes away my nerves,” said Lo. “They tell me even 30 minutes - that brings them one day of joy.”