YSM alumni curate concert broadcasts, playlist for Yale New Haven Health patients, caregivers

Photo courtesty of Home2Home

Over the summer, Yale School of Music alumni presented a series of recorded performances for patients and staff in six Yale New Haven Health system hospitals. Three performances were broadcast on the hospitals’ closed-circuit system. YSM alumni also created a playlist on YouTube.

Interested in doing something for the Yale Day of Service, an annual Yale Alumni Association-led community volunteerism effort that was recently expanded to a yearlong initiative, YSM alumni Felice Doynov ’17MM, Florrie Marshall ’18MM ’25DMA, Jonathan Salamon ’17MM ’23DMA, and Allie Simpson ’17MM ’18MMA—a group that created the online concert series Home2Home when gigs and performance opportunities dried up as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic—curated the first concert, in May, to give back to doctors, nurses, hospital staff, first responders, and those in their care.

“If we can offer even an hour of musical service,” Doynov, a flutist, said, “then that is the role we would be honored to play. … We just want them to feel that we have not forgotten them and their work,” Doynov said, explaining that music has a beautiful way of bringing people together and to a part of themselves that “they might have lost through stress or strife. It can take you to a different world”—the very reason many musicians take up the craft in the first place.

Cellist and Yale School of Music alumnus Harry Doernberg ’19BS ’20MM, who began studies at the Yale School of Medicine in the fall, understands and appreciates the “tremendous pressure” hospital staff are under. Doernberg curated a second concert, which was broadcast in June in Yale New Haven Health system hospitals. Choral conductor and YSM alumna Stephanie Tubiolo ’14BA ’16MM led the Morse Chorale, an ensemble of the Music in Schools Initiative, in a third concert broadcast, and clarinetist and YSM alumna Seunghee “Sunny” Lee ’92MM ’94AD and fellow alumni created a YouTube playlist as part of the larger effort.

Donna Yoo ’09MM, the Yale School of Music’s alumni affairs and admissions director, said, we are realizing anew that music can connect people. “Because we’re musicians, we’re able to do that,” she said.

Joan Kelly, chief experience officer at Yale New Haven Health, agreed, saying music “moves people out of a space of fear and anxiety.”

“You’re not sure what’s next” when facing boredom and isolation in a hospital bed, Kelly said. Through music, patients can “escape and let the melody take you to a different place.” Performances like the concerts YSM alumni organized remind those in the area’s hospitals that “we are in this together,” that patients and caregivers “aren’t alone.”

“It’s been very difficult for staff,” Kelly said, emphasizing that music can help affirm that “their work is meaningful.” When a COVID patient is discharged from the hospital, Kelly said, the staff play Andra Day’s “Rise Up,” and “people cheer.”

Even as many Yale School of Music alumni face an anxious future, those who quickly launched the Home2Home series and similar projects have shown the kind of adaptability that’s required of today’s artist. “That is something the Yale School of Music brought out of us,” Doynov said. “We created this concert series because there was a need. We will continue as long as there’s a need.”

The Yale Alumni Association recognized the Music for Healing project with its Board of Governors Excellence Award. q