Culture Days 2023
09/20/2023
Please note that the concert location has changed to the Atrium.
On September 28, those we care for, their visitors and our staff teams are invited to experience live music and storytelling as Bruyère celebrates Culture Days!
When: 2:30 p.m., September 28, 2023
Where: the Atrium at Saint-Vincent Hospital
What: Loop pedal violist, composer and arranger, Kathryn Patricia Cobbler, presents traditional folk and war songs. Storyteller Kim Kilpatrick and Actor, Poet and Playwright Eleanor Crowder will facilitate a participatory improv session with audience members. Musician Chas Guay will play original songs as well as folk and rock and roll favourites, and Concert Docs Dr. Carol Wiebe and Dr. Fraser Rubens will showcase their talents with classical piano and opera.
Culture Days is a nationwide initiative to celebrate arts and culture, this year running from September 22 – October 15.
Recognizing the value of art to improve patient, resident, and staff wellbeing, in May of 2019 Bruyère and Radical Connections began a partnership to enhance the patient and resident experience by giving them the opportunity to express themselves and collaborate with artists. Radical Connections is a not-for-profit group led by Dr. Carol Wiebe that brings meaningful music, visual, literary, or movement-based arts into hospitals and care settings.
Meet the artists
Kathryn Patricia Cobbler
At this event, loop pedal violist, composer and arranger, Kathryn Patricia Cobbler, presents traditional folk and war songs, resonant with Canadian elders, through a new harmonic lens. She will also play some original pieces. A recipient of one of Ottawa Arts Council’s Emerging Artist awards, she has been featured in Canada’s most notable concert series, including Chamberfest, Music and Beyond, and the Ottawa New Music Creators’ Analogue Series.
Chas Guay
Chas Guay is a consummate professional musician with a background in geriatric and psychiatric support work. Guay is a recipient of the East Coast Music Award for Musical Achievement. He has worked as a recording artist for twenty-five years and continues to perform in the Ottawa area as a singer/songwriter under the guise of Drifting Bird.
Eleanor Crowder and Kim Kilpatrick
Inspired by Calgary’s Inside Out Theatre actor, playwright and director Eleanor Crowder and storyteller and disability rights activist Kim Kilpatrick will demonstrate the improvisational theatre they have been facilitating for the seniors at the Dementia Society’s Daisy Cafe. They will need some help from the audience.
Carol Wiebe
As a family physician, chamber musician, and former hospital executive, Dr. Carol Wiebe uses her broad training and experience to create opportunities where people can find meaning and heal. After several years as VP, Medical Affairs at Bruyère, she co-founded the Bruyère Artist in Residence program and ConcertDocs, with both programs bringing the arts into residential care.
Dr. Fraser Rubens
In addition to his work as a cardiac surgeon at the Ottawa Hospital, Dr. Fraser Rubens has established an active career as an oratorio and concert soloist for choirs throughout Ontario and Quebec. In the last several years, Fraser co-founded ConcertDocs with Dr. Carol Wiebe, providing a platform for musical physicians to fund-raise and perform for people in care.