Talk to Wooster
Spring 2006
Rechanneling Creative Energy
Sylvia Buttrey Huning — Healing With Music
Email Story
High
on the list of a symphonic violinist’s rigors is her fierce concentration
on the musical score before her. As thousands of notes fly by, the ensemble
musician must divide her attention between the written notes, the sounds,
and the conductor’s movements. Audience members in the darkened auditorium
may not
intrude until it is time for them to applaud.
Sylvia Buttrey Huning ’54 has known for most of her life that she possessed musical talent, including the ability to be an ensemble musician. She took piano and violin lessons as a youngster, sang in choirs, and played in numerous symphonies. Following her parents’ advice, she kept music as a hobby and worked as a medical caseworker, educator, and editorial assistant.
And all her life she had a special gift. She could play music “by ear,” without a musical score.Without music, she is free to look her listener squarely in the eye.
She remembers the day she visited her father at a retirement home and took note of a strolling violinist who was playing for the residents. She said to herself, “I can do that.” She was underemployed and underpaid at her job as an editorial assistant at a publishing company in Columbus, Ohio, where she had taken a job to be near her two daughters. She was ready for new opportunities.
Today, at age 74, Huning’s job as the Strolling Violin Lady has grown to approximately 200 bookings every year. Supported by perfect pitch and unencumbered by a musical score, she wanders among her listeners, playing hymns, show tunes, oldies, and folk tunes. Guests request tunes, often referring to her play list of 300 melodies. She often strolls in costume—her clown’s suit is her favorite—and plays musical games with young and old listeners. Sometimes she accompanies herself by singing, and sometimes she uses a harpist. (A sure crowd pleaser is Huning dressed as Groucho and her harpist as Harpo Marx.)
While gigs at business parties, hotels, weddings, and art galleries provide business revenue, Huning has discovered that she receives the most from her talent when she gives it away. The connection that comes from her ability to look closely into the eyes of her listeners makes possible the most important effect of her talent— the power of caring music to heal.
She plays for AIDS patients, rehabilitation clinics, and hospitals. She remembers the time a patient, half paralyzed, reached out for a hug following a performance and whispered, “God bless you.”
“That happens again and again,” Huning says.
Perhaps her most memorable experience occurred in Russia. Huning had been invited by the famous clown and physician Patch Adams to go with him and other performers/healers to St. Petersburg and Moscow to play for children at orphanages and hospitals. At a hospital for burn victims, Huning watched a 15-year-old patient being wheeled in from the operating room. “She was beside herself with pain,” says Huning. “She was in agony.”
Huning played “Amazing Grace” and other peaceful melodies. “ And then I put the violin down on her bed, put my hand on her forehead, and visualized God blessing her with love through me. In 15 minutes she was smiling. It was transforming; it was unbelievable. I’ll never forget her and she’ll never forget me. I know it. It was a connection that was undeniable.”
“What I am doing is what I was meant to do all of my life.”
