By Donna Hemmila

His second day on the job as musician-in-residence at UC San Francisco Children's Hospital, Gabe Turow faced a test of everything he had learned about music and the brain.

A toddler undergoing an EEG procedure was wailing in fear so loudly he could be heard in the hospital corridors. No amount of comforting from his mother could get him to calm down as the child tried to rip out the IV line and electrodes attached to his body.

Turow's new boss, Michael Towne, coordinator of the hospital's Child Life Department, asked him to see if music could soothe the child, the basic premise of the hospital's newly created music program.

Armed with a kalimba – an African instrument also called a thumb piano – Turow entered the boy's room and began to play. Plucking at the metal tines of the small hand-held wooden instrument, Turow caught the child's eye but his screaming continued to battle with the instrument's tinkling, silver-bell sounds.

After a few minutes, however, the child's screams subsided. He told his mother he wanted to crawl into bed. She tucked him in with a bottle and snuggled next to him.

"I slowly moved in and slowed the music down," Turow recalled. "Three or four minutes later, he fell asleep. I got him to calm down without a sedative."

At that moment, Turow knew his new music gig was on the right track.

Hired as the first musician-in-residence at a Northern California hospital, Turow, 25, is charged with making life less stressful and traumatizing for pediatric patients. He does that by both playing music for the kids and by teaching them to make their own music, leading drum circles and teaching patients to play electric guitar and keyboards.

Since that early experience with the distressed toddler, Turow often plays for babies and children undergoing hospital procedures.

"A child's anxiety goes up dramatically when going through a procedure," said Towne. "We've used recorded music, but Gabe can monitor the child's response. He can speed things up or slow down. He can choose the right tempo and volume."

UC San Francisco funds the music program with $25,000 in grants from Rock Against Cancer. With support from musicians including Nelly Furtado, Gwen Stefani, Barenaked Ladies and Bon Jovi, the North Carolina-based nonprofit has funded music programs at eight hospitals around the country, including one at UCLA's Mattel Children's Hospital. Founder Lisa White started the School of Rock programs after seeing the positive role music therapy played in her son Gabriel's survival of childhood leukemia.

UCSF pediatric oncologist Rob Goldsby treated White's son in Salt Lake City. White approached him about starting a music program at the UCSF hospital. It also helped that Goldsby himself was a rocker before he was a doctor, playing drums in Bay Area bands.

"I know music and other art forms are incredibly important to kids going through cancer treatment," Goldsby said. "At minimum, music is a diversion. It helps them escape and not think about what they're going through. It helps them to be normal."

Anything that makes life seem worthwhile – even head-banging punk rock – he said, has a healing effect on young patients.

Unlike traditional music therapy programs that use classical and folk music to help patients relax, Turow said he concentrates on the kind of music young kids like – rock, blues and hip-hop.

"If they're really worked up, it's actually annoying if someone is trying to soothe you and calm you down," Turow said. "The goal is to relate to these teenagers at their level. Even if you're not playing soothing music, getting someone's mind off themselves will do a lot to reduce stress."

The hospital used some of its grant money to buy electric guitars, amplifiers, drums and keyboards for patient music lessons.

"A month in the hospital is way long enough to learn to play a guitar," said Turow. "You can learn to play most rock songs. It's cool and not that hard."

Turow, trained as a classical percussionist, has been making music since age 8. He's a professional drummer and also plays guitar, bass and piano. He is a visiting scholar in the Department of Music and a research associate at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in religious studies and became interested in how people use ritual music to meditate and calm themselves.

At Stanford he helped start the annual Symposium on Music and the Brain.

"I was discovering the neurological basis for what music makes me feel," he said.

Even though his music students at UCSF Children's Hospital are sick, Turow said they are still enthusiastic and energized by a chance to rock out. He gives lessons in the hospital's teen lounge and a classroom where patients keep up their schoolwork. For those too ill to leave their room, Turow teaches and performs at the bedside. Even the youngest patients have fun exploring instruments in the hospital's playroom.

"The youngest kid I've jammed with was 9 months old," Turow said. "I brought in a small marimba and gave him the mallets, and he just wailed on it for 30 minutes. I thought, 'there is something really intense going on here neurologically.' "

That connection between music and brain response is a research area Towne would like the musician-in-residence program at UCSF to become involved with. He'd also like to expand Turow's services beyond the two days funding currently allows him to spend in the hospital. The program also needs to acquire more instruments.

For more information about the UCSF musician-in-residence program and how to help, contact michael.towne@ucsfmedctr.org

Donna Hemmila is editor of Our University.