The Sound Between Us: Music-Making with Older Patients by Beaux Guarini

The Sound Between Us: Music-Making with Older Patients is an intimate, ward-based music project bringing handpan and tongue drum to older patients in hospital. Grounded in relational, responsive music-making, the work centres on shared listening and attunement, fostering moments of connection, presence and mutual responsiveness.

Celebrating UPSTAGEING Canberra, a festival dedicated to creative expression in later life, this session connects an ongoing, volunteer-led music practice with a broader focus on creativity and ageing. Delivered weekly within a hospital ward, it offers small, relational sessions with older patients using handpan and tongue drums – gentle, resonant melodic percussion instruments.

Guided by attentive listening, responsiveness and attunement, the sessions unfold as shared, improvised musical encounters within a communal setting, responding to patients’ presence and ways of engaging. Rather than performance, the focus is on being together through sound, supporting forms of communication that do not necessarily rely on words.

Within the hospital environment, these encounters create space for moments of connection, presence and mutual responsiveness, while remaining sensitive to each patient’s individuality and changing circumstances.

This event is supported by a community grant from COTA ACT, whose support has enabled the purchase of an additional tongue drum to support participation.

Taking place within a hospital ward, the sessions are offered to patients in that setting and are not publicly accessible.