music from the heart

  • By Tami Lange Mosser
  • February 27, 2014
  • 456
                        
Most days, you’ll find Dr. Ken Shafer busy in his cardiology practice at the Cleveland Clinic’s Wooster Specialty Center on Milltown Road in Wooster. But after hours, Shafer trades his stethoscope for a keyboard, playing piano and organ for both his church and for ensembles around town. He started taking lessons at four years old and continued through his undergraduate years at the College of Wooster and later during his medical training in Missouri. Accompanying people and playing with other musicians “forces you to cooperate, to listen, to adjust,” Shafer said. “It’s a dialogue, a way of coming together and communicating an idea.” And Wayne County has its share of medical professionals who share Shafer’s love of music and his desire to give back to the community. Several of those professionals – and their children – will come together Sunday, March 16 from the annual Music from the Heart benefit recital at Scheide Music Center on the College of Wooster campus. The event begins at 7 p.m. It is the 10th year for the event, Shafer said, which initially was a benefit for the American Heart Association and was held on Valentine’s Day. But this is the ninth year that the medical community has come together in support of the People to People Ministries’ prescription medication assistance program In the last year, that program provided $75,000 in vouchers to help people obtain prescription medications they could not otherwise of afford, according to People to People executive director Lydia Stahl. While she is thankful for the numerous discount prescription programs, Stahl said, the People to People program most often helps with the money a person “needs the very first time, before they can get on a program.” The benefit recital has raised close to $20,000 in each of the last few years, Stahl said, because there is very low overhead in putting the event together. In addition to ticket sales of $25 per person general seating, there also are levels of giving above and beyond the cost of a ticket. Patrons giving $100-$249 are designated as Shower Singers, while giving at the $250-$499 level constitutes an Opening Act. Headliners are those donating $500-$1,499 and Underwriters give $1,500 or more. Dr. Tom Graves has helped with fundraising for the event for seven years and said he is always gratified to see how many people in the medical field volunteer to play or sing. There will be music of all types, Graves said, from classical ensembles to vocal performances to a little pop music. Graves and Stahl admit they are not performers. “It’s just been my job to talk to people who are willing to support it,” Graves said. There are any number of doctors who are musically inclined, Shafer said, “and there are more coming out of the closet all the time.” While he admittedly has a busy schedule, Shafer said, “I just commit (to making music). I have to make time for it. … For me, it’s a way of communicating myself, my soul, that I don’t have an outlet for otherwise. It’s a statement of who I am.” Tickets for Music from the Heart are available at Aultman Orrville Hospital, Buehler’s Milltown, the Wooster Community Hospital gift shop, all Ritzman Pharmacy locations in Wayne County and at the People to People office at 454 E. Bowman St., Wooster. For more information about the event or ways to support it, contact People to People Ministries at 330-262-1662, ext. 210.


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