Sharing Notes

Bringing Solace to Chicago Hospital Audiences

Sharing Notes improves quality of life for Chicago hospital patients through intimate, engaging and uplifting live music performances by young professional musicians. The musicians who perform with Sharing Notes make an effort to interact with their audience in the hospital to form genuine connections. They believe that music is a beautiful shared experience and they’ve seen their playing bring joy to patient’s lives. The musicians talk to patients, take musical requests, and react sensitively to the different situations of patients and their families, providing distraction therapy that breaks the monotony and frustrations of illness and hospital life.

By utilizing volunteer music conservatory students and young professional musicians for their programs, Sharing Notes exposes hospital audiences to a wide variety of musical styles and instruments, keeping the programs interesting for patients who are in the hospital long-term.

Sharing Notes provides over 80 performances each year in four Chicago-area medical facilities: La Rabida Children’s Hospital, The Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, the oncology wards at Prentice Women’s Hospital, and the Cardiac Care Units at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Their music served over 3,500 hospital patients and their family members. Not only does Sharing Notes reach large quantity of people, each performance is of great quality. 100% of staff surveyed at La Rabida Hospital said that Sharing Notes performances effectively provide stress management and mood improvement for patients.

Through partnerships with educational institutions such as Roosevelt University and the Negaunee Institute of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sharing Notes gives music students experiential learning opportunities that build skills in audience-driven performance, public speaking, and working with children, the elderly, and the disabled. Each volunteer musician with Sharing Notes is provided the on-site training, event mentorship, and feedback needed to most effectively interact with their audience. In 2017, we at AirTurn will be working to provide support for this program through offering our solutions to make it easier for these talented musicians to share their gifts with Sharing Notes patients. Through the use of goSTANDS, Manos Mounts, and PEDpros, the Sharing Notes team will be able to keep their attention on their patients and not on turning pages.