Mayo clinic lobby as concert hall

I took this snapshot of Rochester resident Jane Belau recently playing the Bosendorfer in the Gonda building lobby at the Mayo Clinic. Twice a week, Monday and Thursday, she performs for and with Mayo staff, community members and, of course, patients.

Maybe this happens everywhere. I'd be interested to hear other stories about live music at medical centers. I remember a friend, a mom, giving birth to a child at a St. Paul hospital years ago and the nurses going around the maternity ward singing to the families.

The music at Mayo Clinic occupies its own niche in part because of the sheer number of visitors and their unusual composition. The people are from all over the world and from all walks of life. And the people are living with all kinds of medical conditions.

The lobby scene the day I visited was probably no different from any other. Nurses mingled with medical doctors alongside patients next to visitors of all kinds. They bustled through the basement level warren of walkways that link the Mayo complex.

There were folks in wheelchairs, on walkers, and many stopped to take in a few minutes of the music. It's a moment of therapy offered along with all the other medical marvels at Mayo.

• Editor’s notebook: Covering the environment in 2014
• Best of Minnesota Scenes from 2014
• 50 years of memory making in the Boundary Waters
• ‘Fargo’ takes home two Emmys