The Gift of Guitar: Rivers Musician Youngest-Ever Service Award Winner

In a sea of 80- and 90-year-olds at Newton-Wellesley Hospital’s volunteer appreciation dinner this past Monday, there sat a thin, rangy kid wearing a pair of blue jeans and a band T-shirt depicting a radio made out of cheese.

“I guess I kind of stood out,” said Kevin Bloom ’12, with a sheepish grin.

He wasn’t kidding – among an audience of 800 volunteers, he was one of only six this year to earn NWH’s esteemed Outstanding Volunteer Award, and, even more impressively, the youngest in the volunteer program’s 33-year history.

For the past year and a half, Bloom has spent nearly every Thursday afternoon in the Pediatric Inpatient Care Unit as a music-therapy volunteer, a position he himself created. He plays acoustic guitar, gives music lessons, and above all, brightens the mood and raises the spirits of the young patients in the unit. Supervisor Kristy Berksza says that she “[has] never had a volunteer who has touched so many families in such a unique way.”

For Bloom, his inspiration to volunteer at NWH stemmed from his own experience in the pediatrics division, where he spent several days with a foot infection in seventh grade. As soon as Bloom learned of Rivers’ community service program, he contacted Berksza about volunteering, which he wasn’t legally able to do until he turned 16.

The Sherborn native walked into the front door of Rivers having never touched an instrument. On his first day in the sixth grade, he came home from his first “not so fun” chorus class and asked his dad if he could take guitar lessons instead. He now practically lives in the Conservatory, studying jazz guitar with Jamie Stewardson and composing a torrent of original songs in his free time.

Bloom’s idea of playing music at the hospital arose from seeing his own brother’s health improve after spending several days at Mass General Hospital with a bongo drummer. Bloom has since made quite an impression at NWH: parents have written him letters thanking him for helping their sons and daughters feel better and, in one case, for inspiring a child to pick up guitar. A local dentist offered to write Bloom a college recommendation on the basis of one day in his company.

“It’s great to make a real difference in these kids’ lives,” he said. “I’ll start playing or invite someone to start jamming with me, and they’ll lighten up immediately.”

He’s learned a few things for himself, too. One eager patient asked Bloom to walk him through the history of modern music, from ragtime to punk-rock, forcing him to improvise and learn to play music by ear. He gets to practice his own instrumental compositions, top-40 pop songs, and even occasional Conservatory assignments.

This week’s honor came as a big shock to the student, who showed up at the recognition dinner hardly expecting to be invited on-stage to shake hands with hospital president Dr. Michael Jellinek.

“It made me feel great, because I didn’t realize how much people appreciated my efforts,” he said. “I’m just glad that doing something I love – playing music – can make other people happy, too.”