“The monotonous beeps and blips of the hospital setting are being joined by a friendlier set of sounds. Patients and health-care workers at Penn Medicine’s six sites can now access a service that brings them archived performance videos of the Philadelphia Orchestra,” writes Peter Dobrin in Thursday’s (5/28) Philadelphia Inquirer. “Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, as well as chamber pieces, are among the works now available on screens throughout the hospital system…. Orchestra president and CEO Matías Tarnopolsky framed the new Philadelphia Orchestra channel in the hospitals as a way to ‘make people feel better at this difficult time,’ and as a chance to ‘share the healing power of music.’ … The new orchestra channel started streaming this month to screens” at multiple area hospitals. “New performances will be added each week…. Emily Hanes, a Penn Presbyterian nurse and amateur violinist, says … about a month ago she played Bach for a COVID-19 patient from behind the door…. ‘After he got better, he said that even though he was very sick and delirious he remembered me playing for him and … how nice that had been,’ she said.”
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