Singer from The Voice brings her talent to Cape hospice patients
Music therapist Cara Brindisi joined the Visiting Nurse Association of Cape Cod Hospice & Palliative Care team about seven months ago. It was a dream job and an opportunity to do meaningful work that she loves, with a healthcare organization that she finds impressive. As a hospice music therapist, her goals are the same goals as the rest of the hospice team, she explained.
“The goals are clinical, so they especially focus on psycho-social and emotional and spiritual goals for the patient, along with family support, pain management and anxiety management. But my role is to do that through the use of music therapy,” she said. “What that looks like first is establishing the therapeutic rapport and the therapeutic relationship, so right off the bat you can be another person to support their end-of-life process. And then I’m assessing what type of music is meaningful to people.”
Music therapy differs from just listening to music on a CD player in many important ways. When a hospice patient hears a song on a CD player, they might bob their head or tap their foot, but they are simply on the receiving end of music without any follow-up from a therapist to help them process their emotional reaction to the music.
When Brindisi sings a song and notices a patient is tapping her toe and moving their body, she might ask the caregiver to gently dance with the patient or hold their hand. That makes it an expressive experience where the patient is receiving music but also experiencing a direct effect to the emotions the music brings out.
“Listening to a CD player is wonderful but that’s not actually a tactile experience compared to the vibrational frequencies of live sound,” Brindisi said. “And then the big part of it is what does the music elicit in terms of memory recall or life review reminiscence that can create therapeutic conversation. So, a lot of times, the therapy is in the discussion of the music itself and that’s guided by me, the therapist, which is what you don’t get when you just listen to a CD player.”
A Wide Range of Music
Because her patients can have a fairly wide range of musical taste, Brindisi’s repertoire is enormous. It includes everything from the 1940s up to and including pop music today. She recently had a female patient in her 60s who loved the pop musician Pink.
“I’m taking these pop songs that you hear on the radio and you start diving into the meaning of some of the lyrics and you play them in a more lullaby, bedside fashion and the songs just morph into the moment,” she said.
“The magic of doing this work in hospice is that you can take rock songs, you can take Led Zeppelin, you can take anything and the music therapist can change it to fit the tone of the room and the tone of the family. The songs become almost specific for them. It’s almost like they were written just for them. It’s so incredible to witness.”
She can also pivot if she sees a patient becoming sad. For example, if she is playing the bittersweet Elvis ballad I Can’t Help Falling in Love and the song makes the patient emotional, she will shift into the more upbeat Blue Suede Shoes halfway through to lighten the moment.
One of the interesting things Brindisi has learned is that the music we listened to and loved between the ages of 18 and 25 become imprinted on who we are, because those are the years that people really come into their own identity. Music from that era of a patient’s life also has a strong ability to recreate memories and emotions, especially for patients with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
From The Voice to VNA Hospice
Brindisi studied music therapy at Berklee College of Music. In 2011, in order to finish her degree, she had to do a clinical internship. She chose to do her internship in San Diego and working at San Diego Hospice is when she discovered an affinity for hospice music therapy.
“I was 23 when I started doing this work and it just fit,” she said. “It fit with who I am spiritually and the type of music that I like to bring to people.”
After Brindisi graduated, she moved back to central Massachusetts, where she grew up. The first job opening in her field was at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester. When the pandemic hit, she was laid off, so she decided to take a break from hospice work and focus on her own music career. She auditioned for the NBC reality show The Voice and was chosen as a contestant in 2022. She competed on Team Gwen and made it to the knockout rounds.
“It was very fun and definitely a cool experience,” she said. “The Voice really helped me get to the next level with my career and I am so grateful.”
After her experience on The Voice, she moved to the Plymouth Bay area almost a year ago. When a full-time job opening came up to work for the Cape Cod Healthcare VNA hospice team it was an opportunity that was too good to turn down, she said.
Brindisi visits the McCarthy Care Center in Sandwich, which provides inpatient hospice services, once or twice a week for a few hours each to sing and work with patients there. She also visits other hospice patients in their homes – wherever they happen to live, from private homes to assisted living to skilled nursing facilities. Even though there is always a sadness, especially for the caregivers who are left behind, she said it is also an honor to do this work.
“Once you realize it’s a fit for you professionally, it’s kind of like a calling,” Brindisi said. “You start to realize this is a really natural part of life. When you meet people that have been so sick for so long and they are finally able to find comfort and peace, which is what hospice can provide, it becomes such a privilege to work in this realm.”
To learn more about Brindisi and her music therapy practice, visit carabrindisi.com.
