Guitarist Michael Bard has performed for every kind of Washington, D.C., crowd: Choral Arts Society holiday revelers, flocks of Latin dance enthusiasts, even the odd secretary of state or Supreme Court justice. But at his Carnegie Hall debut this November in New York City, the Bethesda resident is honoring a new and special group: the military veterans he has served as a teacher, performer and medical musician.
The art of using music to soothe body and soul dates to at least ancient Greece. These days, through groundbreaking efforts that include the Sound Health initiative—a partnership between the National Institutes of Health and the Kennedy Center, in association with the National Endowment for the Arts—scientists across the country are researching the intricate ways music might be used to ease the symptoms of depression, Parkinson’s disease and other conditions.
Bard, 55, became a part of the growing medical music community in 2018 after reading Waking the Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul. Written by guitarist Andrew
Schulman, the book chronicles how hearing Johann Sebastian Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” through a pair of earbuds rescued its author from a postoperative spiral toward death. Intrigued, Bard began training with the Medical Musician Initiative (MMI), a nonprofit co-founded by Schulman that trains concert-level acoustic musicians how to work with medical teams in intensive care units.
At Massachusetts’ Berkshire Medical Center, Bard’s MMI instructors taught him about how ICU teams operate, how to serve as a team member, and how to identify which music worked best for specific patients. “I was there to learn how to heal and help with positive patient outcomes,” he says. “You have to find just the right musical prescriptions for each patient’s individual needs.” Bard found, for instance, that slow major-key pieces calm many nonverbal patients. He relies on intuition, based on decades of experience, to tell him whether to play for those patients the second movement from Dvořák’s “New World Symphony,” “Amazing Grace” or another selection.
With a master’s degree in classical guitar, intensive training in flamenco, and experience playing worldwide as a cultural ambassador for the U.S. State Department, Bard also has honed a versatility that serves his new calling well. Following the lead of string instrument luminaries such as cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who has recorded bluegrass and tangos, Bard can play and improvise fluently in numerous styles that easily connect with patients of all nationalities and walks of life.
For years, Bard has held down a heavy performance and teaching schedule featuring ongoing gigs as a member of Trio Caliente, a Bethesda-based band that performs Latin and Brazilian music locally and at music festivals across the country; guest appearances with Choral Arts and other performers; and a student roster that has listed top U.S. government officials along with young wannabe shredders. But after his MMI training, he carved out time to play for the National Institutes of Health’s Pain and Palliative Care service at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda.
Among the service’s patients was retired U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Ronald Wilgenbusch, who asked Bard to play the “Concierto de Aranjuez” by Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo. “The cheer that you brought…flooded into me,” Wilgenbusch wrote after being discharged, before dying in 2022. “I could hear you playing long after you left the room—even if it was just in my head.”
Word of Bard’s healing music spread to Marlow Guitar International, a Rockville nonprofit that runs the Regis Ferruzza Guitars for Veterans program in cooperation with the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at Easterseals in Silver Spring. Designed to help veterans cope with anxiety, stress and other challenges, the program provides participants with a guitar, 15 one-hour lessons and accoutrements such as books, music stands and footstools.
As the son of a Ukrainian immigrant who served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War, Bard enthusiastically signed on. When COVID-19 brought his in-person lessons for Marlow to an end, he continued them via Zoom and won praise for his gentle approach. “He’s just a wonderful person,” says Gary Mason, a Vietnam veteran and retired elementary/middle school teacher living in New Mexico who studied remotely with Bard in 2021 and 2022. “I really appreciated his expert tutelage and patience.”
Talha Aziz, a current student who served in the U.S. Navy from 2003 to 2007, has similar sentiments. “We’re so connected to our devices…when you go to an acoustic guitar, all the noise goes away,” says Aziz, who is a program manager for Oracle. “[Bard] has a perfect temperament…he always puts me at ease.”
Bard has also served as a guest lecturer for Harvard University’s online extension course “Music and the Mind,” where he has helped psychology students and others explore the practicalities and value of music therapy.
Bard’s debut at Carnegie’s 268-seat Weill Recital Hall on Nov. 4 is slated to be an evening of classical, Spanish and Brazilian music. The Veterans Repertory Theater of New York will receive a portion of the concert proceeds. Among the guest artists joining Bard is Bethesda soprano Aurora Dainer, 16, a junior at Walt Whitman High School.
Bard plans to continue his healing work in the years to come. He has seen what music can do, he says—and it’s a reward in itself. “Being part of the transformation veterans and patients experience when learning and listening to music has meant everything to me,” Bard says. “It’s one of the most important things I’ve done with my life.”
This story appears in the November/December issue of Bethesda Magazine.