Slice: Delivering heavenly music

Lucia Respess listens to heavenly music as she waits for the Almighty.

“The good Lord is coming to take me,” says Respess. “But I am 101 years old, so I'm ready.”

It's a beautiful spring morning at Omaha's Hospice House, and Respess is in a hospital bed, breathing through an oxygen tube. She's been there for barely 24 hours and already has a visitor.

Mary Bircher enters the room with a portable harp and begins to play a traditional Scottish tune called “Wild Mountain Thyme.” Respess' eyes brighten as Bircher's fingers pluck out a series of glistening arpeggios.

“That's so beautiful,” Respess exclaims. “I'm so thankful you're here.”

Bircher was at Hospice House as part of the Omaha Chamber Music Society's new pilot program.

Over the next six months, 10 chamber society artists, many of whom also play for the Omaha Symphony, will visit Hospice House to perform for the residents.

Music outreach is a big priority for the chamber society, which is best known for its summer concert series every June at St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church.

The group began sending its musicians to the University of Nebraska Medical Center last year as part of an ongoing lunchtime series called “Music as Medicine.” The next scheduled concert is May 20 at noon in the Durham Outpatient Center.

When the society decided to expand its outreach programs earlier this year, executive director Stacie Haneline immediately thought of Hospice House.

“I think we have a tendency to forget about people who are at the ends of their lives,” she said.

Haneline approached Augustana Lutheran Church, where she is organist and music director, for a grant. She received $1,000 to launch the six-month pilot program at Hospice House. Among other things, the funds will be used to pay stipends to the musicians.

Gary George, Hospice House's executive director, says the society's program is important for a couple of reasons.

One, chamber society musicians are all top-notch professionals.

“We mostly get visits from amateur groups,” George said. “So it's a thrill for our residents to hear music played on the high level of the chamber society.”

And two, the music serves a therapeutic purpose for people who are nearing life's end.

“Music is like food in that it's a powerful memory trigger,” he said. “It's important and healthy for people in hospice to have positive memories and to reflect on their lives.”

The Irish jigs and Scottish dances that flowed from Bircher's harp had Respess thinking back nearly a century, when, as a girl growing up on a farm near Harlan, Iowa, she was a devoted violinist.

Though she ultimately gave up the fiddle, she never lost her love for music.

“There's something lacking in a person who doesn't love music,” says Respess, who notes that her favorite music is from Bizet's opera “Carmen.”

Eleanor Ruzicka's musical tastes run more in the direction of Lawrence Welk.

Bircher enters Ruzicka's room and asks if there's anything she'd like to hear.

“Do you know the ‘Blue Skirt Waltz”? asks Ruzicka.

Bircher never heard of it.

Ruzicka, 84, lived most of her life on an 80-acre farm in Dodge County, Neb., where she was born. She developed early interests in gardening and embroidery and a real passion for polkas, especially the ones she heard on the old Welk television series.

Bircher promises to return with sheet music for the waltz.

In the meantime, she offers to play Ruzicka a different piece.

“I'm originally from Virginia and would like to play for you a song called ‘Shenandoah,' ” Bircher tells her.

Bircher joined the Omaha Symphony as principal harpist in 1981, not long after graduating from the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore.

She's spent most of her career working as a concert artist but developed an interest in music therapy about seven years ago, when she began playing at Omaha's Children's Hospital and Medical Center. Now she's training to receive certification.

Bircher's penchant for Irish and Scottish tunes is especially appealing to Julie Aken.

An Omaha native, Aken, 55, spent years as an accountant for World Insurance Co.

Now in the final stages of lung cancer, Aken wants to hear music that reminds her of her Gaelic heritage.

Bircher knows just what to play.

She begins with the traditional Scottish song “Loch Lomond,” known for its familiar refrain, “you take the high road, and I'll take the low road, and I'll be in Scotland afore you.”

She concludes with a deeply felt rendition of “Amazing Grace.”

Aken is quiet for a moment and then breaks into a broad smile.

“That's my kind of music,” she says.

Contact the writer:

444-1076, john.pitcher@owh.com

« Living

Share