Swan Songs Portland plans Sept. 17 fundraiser after record month

Swan Songs Portland, a nonprofit that sends musicians to play for hospice patients, hit its highest monthly concert count in July.

Now the organization is preparing a fundraiser to keep paying the performers who make those bedside concerts possible. The chapter holds a fundraising concert at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, at Artichoke Music, 2007 S.E. Powell Blvd., featuring Albert Reda and Alan Hager. Tickets are $20 at swansongs.org/portland.

Swan Songs Portland is a branch of the Austin, Texas-based Swan Songs, founded in 2005 by musician Christine Albert after she played for a terminally ill friend. The Portland chapter launched in 2024, and its first request was for mariachi music, according to the Swan Songs website. The chapter has since grown to an average of four concerts per month, Oregon ArtsWatch reported Sunday, Sept. 6.

Every concert is free to the patient and family. Musicians are matched to each person's tastes. Performers have included opera singers, folk artists, jazz ensembles and a mariachi band. Compensating those musicians is a core value, Board President Jim Friscia said, with donations, grants and fundraising events covering the cost.

Ellen Rogers, a board member and outreach chair who spent decades working around death as a capital-murder investigator and with AIDS patients in San Francisco, described what she has witnessed at concerts.

"Something unexpectedly beautiful has happened at every concert I have attended," Rogers told Oregon ArtsWatch. "A non-responsive woman suddenly sings an entire song flawlessly. A comatose man moves his toe to the beat of the music."

At one concert at Avamere at Bethany, a memory-care community northwest of downtown Portland, the husband-and-wife duo Moongate played for Frank, 77, who has Parkinson's and Lewy body dementia. Frank's wife Pam told the musicians the couple met at age 12 at the donut shop where Frank worked. They have been married 60 years.

Peter LeClair of Moongate said Frank's toes and mouth moved during the music. When the duo finished, Frank brought his hands together in what LeClair described as applause.

Residents can request a free Swan Songs concert for someone in hospice care at swansongs.org/portland.

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