The Seattle-based non-profit Melodic Caring Project has been bringing personalized live music performances by a wide range of touring artists directly to the hospital beds of sick children in isolation or quarantine since 2011. With the COVID-19 pandemic putting live concerts on indefinite hold, the 501c3 charity has been reaching out to an army of music artists, many participants in previous MCP streaming events, to help them create original content to deliver to their community and beyond.
MCPConnects, the organization’s newest series launched in late March as the coronavirus epidemic resulted in orders to “Stay at Home,” brings music content to MCP’s community of rockSTARS watching from hospitals and home-care facilities around the world. The newest addition to the series is an interview and performance by soul and R&B singer Allen Stone who lives in Seattle
Singer-songwriter Amos Lee’s segment for MCPConnects will post this coming week. Lee, a long-time supporter of Melodic Caring Project’s work, gave a shout-out during his 2016 livestreamed show to then 7-year-old Maya who had just been diagnosed with kidney cancer. Following the concert, Lee went to the hospital to meet Maya in person, a meeting that had inspired a warm friendship and the song “Little Light” that was included on his most recent album, MY NEW MOON, released last year.
Other artists who have already participated in the new series include Fitz and the Tantrums, American Authors, Mondo Cozmo, Tyrone Wells, Eric Bibb, Eva Holbrook (SHEL), Tim Wilson (Ivan & Alyosha), Ethan Anderson (Massy Ferguson), Brandon Ghorley (The BGP), Rob Drabkin, Haley Johnsen, Lisbeth Scott, Bailen and The T Sisters. New episodes in the series, comprising a short Facetime conversation conducted by MCP founder Levi Ware with an artist, followed by a performance of a song, are posting weekly. Many more segments are in the queue to be posted or will be shot over the coming weeks.
Melodic Caring Project, co-founded by recording artist Levi Ware and his wife Stephanie, first tapped into the array of local concerts in the Seattle area, live streaming artists’ scheduled shows from local clubs to local hospital wards populated by severely ill children they dubbed rockSTARS. During each live broadcast, the artist on stage calls the patients out by name, offering love and support to each child and their families. The organization slowly expanded its dominion to add shows originating from much larger venues—some in other cities—by high profile artists, among them Brandi Carlile, Andra Day, Jools Holland, Coldplay, Hozier, The ROOTS, Lukas Nelson, Black Eyed Peas, Fitz and the Tantrums, Andy Grammar, Jason Mraz, Amos Lee, David Crosby, X Ambassadors, and many others. Since its inception, the organization has impacted the lives of over 15,000 children and family members with personalized concerts viewed from hospital rooms around the world.
Recently, Britain’s National Health Service requested that MCP create original content along the lines of MCPConnects to be shared with its hospital workers and first responders on the front lines of the crisis there as well as another isolated community in need of the magic of music--seniors in nursing and hospice care facilities. Ware is planning to bring these types of segments to senior facilities here in the U.S. as well in the coming months.
Melodic Caring Project has essentially brought the outside world directly to children too sick to leave their hospital beds. With live concerts furloughed during the current pandemic, MCP has used its existing technology to service an already captive audience with fresh, original content and now expand their reach to include so many living in isolation the world over. In this time of social distancing that the public at large is experiencing for the first time, there has never been a greater need for the healing power of music.
