Founders' Story

In 1999, the Kristen Ann Carr Fund sponsored a concert at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center with the help of Michael Solomon and Vivek Tiwary. Nurses carefully transported patients to the hospital’s recreation area, arranging seats and wheelchairs around a temporary stage. IV poles were present throughout the audience, their bags forming a mezzanine audience overhead.

Finally, Kenli Mattus began to perform and something wonderful happened. Feet began to tap and heads nodded to the beat. Smiles formed on patients’ faces and some closed their eyes in revelry. His music was like a melodious breeze moving throughout the room; joyful notes drifted through the air before settling comfortably on the souls of his audience.

It was just what the patients needed, one of the nurses said, and such a shame that some were unable to attend because they were in treatment or too sick to leave their rooms. It was clear that some of the patients who needed music most were unable to go to the concert.

So Mattus brought the concert to them.

He went room to room, along with Michael and Vivek, and played at the bedsides of those who had missed the concert. What happened in the rec room happened on an even deeper and more intimate level. Michael and Vivek knew they had to form an organization that could bring the same inspiration to the bedsides of patients in hospitals everywhere.

And so Musicians On Call was born, right on cue.