October 19, 2006 Issue                                       

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©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Tribute to AIDS victim to benefit Wyndmoor hospice
by AUDREY LEVINE

The jacket of Laura Thomae’s new fundraising record for Keystone Hospice.

“If you feel that night fall dark upon you/With no hope anywhere … Let music be your prayer.”

Laura Thomae’s beliefs about music are immortalized in her new single, “Alleluia,” which she wrote as a tribute to a friend of hers who died from AIDS, and as a remembrance of a special therapy session she had with her group at the Keystone Home Health and Hospice in Wyndmoor.

“Music is my vehicle to process what I am going through,” said Thomae, a musician and coordinator for the therapeutic arts program at Keystone Hospice. “Even as a child, I knew it was a powerful force in my life.”

Thomae said she has always loved music and was born into a family where it was expected that she would be a musician.

“My father played instruments, my mother sang and my grandma taught music,” she said. “Music comes very naturally to me as a means of expression.”

Thomae used this feeling to guide her in writing her single, which she said was partly inspired by the people she spoke with in her therapy sessions at Keystone.

“I was driving one day after having an incredible session with people with hardships,” she said. “I worked with these people who had had music sustain them. It is such a powerful force.”

The single, which will benefit the therapeutic arts program at the hospice, is one sample from her album, Church of the Broken Pieces. The album is expected to be released in April, 2007. Thomae said she wrote several of the included songs and also sang medleys of old spirituals she enjoys.

“The CD is about searching for something beyond yourself,” she said. “I am fascinated by things that are unseen.”

Thomae said she has always had an interest in releasing an album but never before had the opportunity or time to put it all together. Now, she is looking forward to the release of her first album.

Thomae has also devoted herself to music therapy for years, after deciding it was the best way to combine her love of psychology and music into a profession. She attended the former Combs College of Music in Philadelphia, graduating in 1987, before getting certified in music therapy from Immaculata University in Chester County in 1992.

She continued her graduate studies in 1997 at Hahnemann University, and now Drexel University.

Thomae began her therapy career contracting as a music therapist before she found out about Keystone Hospice. She said her partner, Rodney Whittenberg, was videotaping a dance performance there of a man who was dying of AIDS, but wanted to perform one last time. Although she was planning to attend the performance, Whittenberg asked her to come early after he recommended her for the position of therapist.

“I fell in love with the place,” she said. “It was the place I had been envisioning. Any place that honors who a person is at the end of life … is the place where I need to be.”

Thomae said the hospice, which opened about 10 years ago to transition people who are at the end of their lives, was the first one to open in Pennsylvania. She said the musical therapy program is a very important part of the organization.

“Music is such a potent intervention,” she said. “It has emotional and physiological effects. It is amazing how music brings so much hope to people when they are struggling.”

Thomae said she works with people, many of whom suffered through such hardships as dealing with the former Jim Crow laws, who are close to the end of their lives and unable to adjust to the transition. Many people she works with choose to write legacy pieces, songs about their experiences that will keep their memories alive after they are gone.

According to Thomae, one woman chose to write a song to the tune of “Under the Boardwalk” by The Drifters because her family had been going to the shore for several years. Thomae facilitated the song-writing process and recorded it for the woman.

“Her goals were to give her daughters her rings and finish the song,” she said. “I played the song for her, and she smiled and died the next day. She wanted her family to treasure the memories.”

Thomae said she is very proud of her work because of the positive effect it has on the people she works with. She said she also likes to offer different programs for the staff, who are forced to deal with death every day.

“It is amazing the effect music has on the body,” she said.

Thomae, a resident of Germantown who was born in Dallas, Texas, and moved to Valley Forge when she was four years old, said she is very happy with her job and her home.

“Germantown is very mixed racially and economically,” she said. “That is what the world is, and I don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t reflect it.”