#BackToLive: Charlie Gorman

Charlie Gorman is a guitarist and vocalist who has been a Music in Hospitals & Care musician in Scotland since 2013.

“I didn’t realise how powerful live music could be or how much it can help others until I joined Music in Hospitals & Care. It’s clear that it touches people and can get responses from them like nothing else can. It’s obviously touching something in the brain that other medical treatments and medicines aren’t.

There’s been numerous occasions where I’ve shared live music through Music in Hospitals & Care and someone who has lost the power of speech has spoken for the first time in a long time. That happened when a man who’d had a stroke and hadn’t spoken in weeks started to sing. He had an amazing voice and half a dozen of the guys in the group were crying, it was so emotional.

Or the people I share live music with may be just have been completely detached from their family. After I share live music with them, families will say to me: ‘For that hour, I got my mum back’.

I’ve really missed the human contact of sharing live music. Starting to get #BackToLive with Music in Hospitals & Care has been fantastic. I shared live music with a group of men with mental health problems in Glasgow in a forest garden. At the start, they were quiet and subdued. By the end, they were singing along, asking for songs, and participating.

Sharing live music is probably one of the best experiences you can have in life. And sharing live music with Music in Hospitals & Care has been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. It’s such a two-way thing. It gives me nourishment.”