Category Archives: Music

The Coldplay Spectacle

It’s a moment I’ll remember forever.

I’m sitting in a stadium full of 60,000 Coldplay fans, the chilly and dark atmosphere tense with anticipation. In fades the ambient intro to “A Head Full of Dreams,” and sea of wristbands awaken unexpectedly and bathe the crowd in a warm red glow. Cheers echo across as Will Champion’s beats and Guy Berryman’s bass line begin, and Jonny Buckland’s guitar riff enters. The spotlight illuminates Coldplay onstage, rainbow fireworks explode, and Chris Martin dances forward spinning merrily and crooning “oh, I think I’ve landed / in a world I hadn’t seen!

I’ve liked Coldplay for a while now, but I rarely attend (non-classical) concerts, so when one of my best friends scored Coldplay tickets for Saturday, we fulfilled a longtime dream: Coldplay, live.

Continue reading The Coldplay Spectacle

Finding the SFH Pianos

For three weeks, Sing For Hope has scattered 60 pianos painted by local artists all around the five boroughs of New York City. After today, they will be transported to their final homes: NYC public schools. 

I don’t know why I decided to challenge myself to visit as many of them as possible — especially during a pretty busy stretch in med school — but that’s what I did! Continue reading Finding the SFH Pianos

Music Against Medicine

A hospital floor is so noisy. Despite posting signs reading “Quiet is Healing” in the halls, it’s mostly an iatrogenic cacophony.

Some of it is necessary distraction, like IV Pump alarms, telemetry alarms, bed alarms, telephone rings, beeper beeps (lol, yes still a thing). Sadly, they’re all dissonant tones! Phones are B-E trills, heart monitors are a high B-ish, beepers are mostly F#. Why couldn’t they be harmonic in the same key so that when they inevitably pile up it’d be a pleasant chiming instead of this din of ding-dings we have to yell over? Continue reading Music Against Medicine