THE SONNY PUGAR MEMORIAL INC

Our main goal is reflected in our mission statement--to build a stronger music community by providing more performance opportunites for regional musicians. We believe Music Smiles is an elegant path to this goal, since it serves both the music community and the greater good of the Pittsburgh region.

We believe that continued dialogue with hospitals will help build Music Smiles. The program has already grown by reputation, and this indicates that each visit is an opportunity to show what impact live music makes on patients and their families.
Media exposure is another strategy that we are pursuing, with some success. Social media has had a great impact on our growth, and we will continue to use and monitor that as well.
Finally, we continue to build trust within the music community, and those members are instrumental in spreading the word about our mission and Music Smiles.

We have relationships with over 250 of those local contemporary musicians—highly skilled and experienced labor, ready to work on jobs that we are ready to create immediately. We have been engaged in the “Music Smiles" program for close to ten years, and we know what a successful program needs to expand. We know what the musicians need—contract jobs in venues that offer enthusiastic audiences; what the hospitals need—coordinated bookings of skilled musicians appropriate for their music therapy programs; and what the patients and caregivers need—music that can aid in the healing process and relieve the stress of illness.

Partnering the musical and healing arts, “Music Smiles” is a most original and unique program serving the Greater Pittsburgh region. We work with existing patient relations, volunteer services, family services, or music therapy departments and programs within the hospitals or other health facilities. The music and the artists who play create a therapeutic environment for patients and their families, and this live music may open doors to reduce stress and to generate paths to comfort and healing. ‘Music Smiles’ makes possible a professional musician’s presence for patients and their families who are unable to benefit from such live music in any other way during a difficult time. Given the professional musician’s ability to connect quickly with an audience, this presence also will mean restoring in part the positive personal and societal relationships lost by patients—and their families—during a period of illness or disability. Hospital staff also may find reduced stress levels, as well.

This is a unique program in that it has a dual impact—not only does the music help healing and restore spirit (as research has shown), but the program also pays the musicians for their services, thus assuring a dependability and professionalism not always characteristic in all-volunteer programs. In this way, ‘Music Smiles’ contributes not only to the comfort of the ailing, but also to the economic health of a specific segment of the music community too often overlooked by charitable, non-profit support—those musicians who play the grassroots music of pop, jazz, rock, blues, r&b, folk, country, and many derivative genres. Both ‘Music Smiles’ and The Sonny Pugar Memorial are grounded in the values of the life-affirming and compassionate philosophy of Fred Rogers, in the recognition of the profound historical and social significance of grassroots music, in the knowledge and familiarity of the stern economic realities that characterize the music community, and in the respect for the empirical and anecdotal evidence that confirms the healing power of music. The duality of the program adds to its stability, strength and sustainability, since we are able to affiliate with two local communities—health and welfare, and the arts.

Uniquely redefining the area's live music market and responding to it with Music Smiles has placed us outside the box both figuratively and literally. But it works: to date at over 900 performances for approximately 250 musicians, and growing every month.
We are also currently growing the Coda program, which is an audio collection of regional legacy musicians' personal narratives and which serves to trace the modern history of the Pittsburgh region, both culturally and generally. As of now, the interviews will be initially presented as a podcast with a local radio person. After that, we hope to put the interviews into CD's and distribute to local public and college libraries.