BY CHRISTOPHER WAINWRIGHT
The ability to transform medical care from scary to peace-filled deeply resonates with me. As a child, I went through many medical procedures and know first-hand how different it could have been had Hush existed some 25 years ago.
Through the composition and recording of new works, Hush is on a mission to make environments including operating theatres and therapy rooms feel calmer and less threatening. Hush was founded 16 years ago when physician Dr Catherine Crock was asked by some patients’ parents how she could create a calmer environment. Thanks to her vision, get-up-go, and some amazing networks, it has evolved. Appreciating its capacity for change, I like to dedicate some of my time to volunteer with the foundation.
Fifteen CDs on, Hush is about to launch its newest ABC Classics CD A Piece of Quiet featuring acclaimed Australian musicians Lior and The Idea of North. I take some time to chat with Catherine about Hush’s evolution, the new release, and an exciting new project working with the best of Australia’s classical composers.
What inspired you to found Hush?
I work at the Children’s Hospital doing procedures on children who have leukaemia and it’s a fairly stressful environment for the children and the families. And it was actually those families who said to me: ‘Could we have some special music that might help to keep the children more calm and help us to get through these procedures, that are going to be occurring may be 50 times over a couple of years?’. So for the families, it was really important how we improve the environment. I just thought: ‘I’ve got such good contacts in the music world, I’m sure they would know how to do this and know how to help’. And that really is how it come about, now 16 years ago.
What were some of your immediate observations when you started providing music in these clinical settings?
What we find is we can get the children really engaged and it does not even have to be lullaby music, it needs to be something that takes their attention to a really positive and optimistic place. Once we’ve got that, it is much easier to explain what needs to be done and to get them off to sleep for their procedures, and the flow-on effect is that the parents really quickly feel much more calm and safe and comfortable with us. Everyone trusts us and then everything goes really smoothly.
Can you tell me how the collaboration with Lior and The Idea of North evolved?
My daughter Michelle has been very interested in music and singing, and sang in choirs for a long time. One of the groups that she had followed for a long time was The Idea of North – she’s been to all of their Melbourne concerts and she just thought they had the right sort of vibe and also the right personality to be involved in Hush. So she encouraged me to talk to them, and it would have been four years ago now. These Hush projects take a long time – thinking about the original idea and actually developing them. So, I spoke with The Idea of North and they were onboard straight away and thought it fitted well with their philosophy of life. We started to brainstorm what the actual music might be. When they said: ‘There is a particular singer we’ve always wanted to work and sing with, that’s Lior’. So, we talked to Lior, and he said: ‘Yes, I’d love to come’.
Another really important musician and composer to Hush is Elena Kats-Chernin, who’s worked with us several times and she’s done some really great, beautiful music. For instance, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and we also wanted her to come too. So we put them all in a room together and what happened was quite magical; they all sparked off each other really quickly, the ideas started flowing, and the one that we all ended up with was ‘let’s really involve kids in this one, in a different way as to what Hush has done before, and ask kids what their philosophy of life is? What things matters to them?’. My daughter Michelle went and did a lot of the interviewing with the children, both sick and well children, and the responses we got were such great inspiration for songs. Off it went!
The responses have been great. We have tested it at Westmead Children’s Hospital and Monash and it has the desired effect, which actually engages you and make you feel optimistic and hopeful.
What else do you think is uniquely special about this recording?
What this one has to me is a really deep integrity, because the children have really driven the content and I think it will also take Hush into lots of other areas. We will have music therapists who can learn them and sing them in different hospitals around Australia and around the world. I think choirs are going to pick up on it too and for me any time Hush has the opportunity to have the music played publicly, it gives us the chance to talk about how we could improve healthcare by really thinking about the environment and thinking about how people treat each other and how kindness and good communication towards each other is really important. So that’s the underlying message from Hush that this is about improving everyone’s healthcare experience.
Thinking about improving healthcare, I am aware that you’re involved in a study drawing on about 7000 responses. Can you tell us about this research?
It’s still actually fairly early using the Hush music. We’ve got some researchers at Deakin University looking at the impact of specific pieces of music and it will be a couple of years off. But we’ve also got researchers looking at the other angle – what is the impact on the musicians and composers who then been involved in something like this? So interviewing composers such as Graeme Koehne, Paul Stanhope, Matthew Hindson and Stuart Greenbaum and some of the others, what it does for them musically to have such a specific brief where their music is going to have a therapeutic outcome for people. That’s very fascinating and that will probably be published later this year. What the composers are saying to us is that it is very important for them too, because they have to think so carefully about the content and impact of the music in a different way to people just listening and being entertained by music.
What is the next project Hush is currently planning?
We’ve got a big one planned. It will probably take until 2018 for it to be completed, but we are going to put composers into a residency program in hospitals in pretty much every state of Australia. So over in South Australia, Graeme Koehne will be in charge of this one and we’ll probably use a couple of hospitals in Adelaide and take a composer, whose an established Hush composer, plus an up and coming composer who is the mentee. They’ll go together and spend time in the hospital and particularly in an area where there are people with mental health issues. This will be quite an exciting one and then we’ll have the music composed for a big ensemble.
Is this Hush’s first national project?
Yes. In the past, we’ve brought composers and musicians to Melbourne to work on the project and what we decided this time is that it would be a much more national and collaborative one, if they stayed in the place where they live. So James Ledger will stay in Western Australia, Graeme in Adelaide, Paul Stanhope in New South Wales. Composers will be able to choose a hospital in their own area and then I think it will be a very interesting collaboration, when one group plays that music, and then can hopefully tour the nation, that’s our plan.
You can support the Hush foundation and its mission by purchasing its latest album here, or attending the launch event in Sydney today or in Melbourne on November 24. Information and tickets available online.
Images supplied.
