HEALING MUSES suspended operations on March 31, 2025.
Our former Healing Muse harpers Patrice Haan, Margaret Davis, and Shira Kammen are continuing their work.
Patrice Haan
”I will continue to work with cancer patients at UCSF, courtesy of Art for Recovery. My weekly schedule includes a meditative music session, two workshops: one for expressive art and the other for writing, and an open art studio for cancer patients. Additionally, I play every Wednesday at the UCSF Cancer Center in Berkeley. Like the other Muses I am blessed to be able to continue offering therapeutic music for children at the George Mark Childrens' Home pediatric palliative care facility.
Outside of this work, I continue to write music and songs, and am working on a new album of original compositions. I meet with and facilitate a number of songwriters' and poetry groups. I perform American Songbook standards with Tony Marcus in the duo Leftover Dreams. Swimming and gardening keep me occupied and healthy the rest of the time.”
Margaret Davis
Margaret is pleased to continue her work as a therapeutic harper at George Mark Children’s House, along with Patrice and Shira. She is also available for hospice harp and is certified in End of Life Care.
She continues performing on voice, Celtic harp, flute, and recorders with her Celtic/Early Music trio Brocelïande, Celtic rock band Avalon Rising, and Celtic/eclectic duo Margaret & Kristoph. Margaret also occasionally teaches recorder and flute, and she is available for studio work on voice and all of her instruments. Her new album, “The Elder Lass”, will be released later this year. In addition to her musical work, Margaret is an accomplished artist and calligrapher and is involved in many art shows and commissions:
https://flowinglass.com/margaret-davis
https://www.margaretdavisart.com
Shira Kammen
Shira continues to maintain her full schedule of early and traditional music performances on violin, viola, fiddle, vielle, rebec, medieval harp, and voice. In addition to performing, she is busy teaching groups and individuals, directing choirs, composing, and arranging.
Dear Healing Muses Supporters,
For over 25 years, Healing Muses has provided comforting music to countless patients, family members, and medical staff in hospitals and recovery centers around the Bay Area. As part of this heartening success story, the organization has respected our wonderful Muses, treating them with care, compensating them for their worth, and showcasing their extraordinary skills through quality recordings and public performances. With pride in our accomplishments and with sadness now, we must tell you that Healing Muses will end operations at the end of March 2025.
Over the years, a small but mighty group of dedicated Board members and staff has managed our finances and operations responsibly — through lean times and good times — including during the pandemic which forced us to dramatically alter operations to maintain our mission. Despite these efforts, and the clear evidence of live music’s therapeutic power, the landscape in which we operate has dramatically changed. Citing their own altered circumstances, benefitting organizations are no longer willing to pay for our modestly priced services, and even with notable success in winning competitive grants, scant funding is available for efforts like ours. Despite careful budgeting and the amazing efforts of our most recent Executive Director to raise funds, we have watched our operating reserve steadily diminish.
It is within this new reality that the Board has made the difficult decision to end operations. Work will continue so that reserves are used to fulfill our mission through March of 2025, and our November concert will proceed as a celebration of our 25 years of service, and as a thank you to our community who has been essential to our survival.
We hope you will join us there and take heart in remembering the many lives our Muses have touched with their beautiful music.
Thank you so much for your support; none of this work could have been done without you.
With gratitude,
The Healing Muses Board —
Marla Fibish, Inanna Hazel, Philip Batchelder & Judy Kelly
HEALING MUSES
Celebrating 25 years of healing music
Because music heals.