Not to be a downer, but we’re all going to die. Three in four adults have at least one chronic condition, and more than half have two or more. In other words, most of us will see our deaths coming. For Cambria musician Brynn Albanese, her job is to make the transition from life to death as comfortable and serene as possible.
Hear all about it
You can hear Brynn Albanese perform live when she joins Cali-Cubano band Zongo All-Stars in a Live on the Rocks concert on the bluff behind The Cliffs Hotel and Spa on Memorial Day, Monday, May 25 (1 to 5 p.m.; all ages; free but you can RSVP at my805tix.com). Albanese will also give her lecture, Music is Medicine, which includes a concert, on Saturday, May 30, in Shepard Hall of the Santa Maria Library (3 p.m.; all ages; free). Donate to her practice at ecologistics.org/pneuma-melodies.
The concert violinist has transitioned from performance to service in the last couple of years by becoming a certified music practitioner and end-of-life doula who works with both terminally ill patients and sick people in recovery.
According to the National Library of Medicine, music can be therapeutic. Albanese has lectured on the topic in a presentation called Music is Medicine, which she describes as “an emotional and engaging therapeutic musical presentation that explores the healing power of music through science, storytelling, and lived experience.”
In her presentation, which she offers along with a concert, she “weaves together the science of frequencies, vibration, and organized sound—what we know as music—with deeply moving stories drawn directly from patients’ bedsides in medical facilities. This presentation offers audiences a rare intersection of art, medicine, and humanity.”
A musical life was inevitable. Both her parents were performers, and her father was a music teacher in Southern California for 38 years. She describes him as the Mr. Holland of Palos Verdes, after the 1995 film Mr. Holland’s Opus starring Richard Dreyfuss. Though destined to become a musician, her path from artist to healer was not an easy one.
After a short stint at Juilliard, she got a scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore and had a concert career on the East Coast. Later she spent eight years living and performing in the Netherlands. Then she learned her brother had committed suicide.
“When my brother died in 2000, I was there working, and then over the course of four years, I felt like I needed to go home,” she explained. “I remember playing the last note of a symphony. It was Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the Pastorale Symphony. And I said to myself, ‘I’m done. I’m done with this full-time orchestra life.’ I’ve been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. I was also ready to be home with my parents and help them navigate losing a child.”
‘I was a little bit obsessed with death because so many people were dying. I had lost so many people in my life, really important people. I had been reading about these death companions, about how to give someone a good death. Can you have a good death?’
—Brynn Albanese, certified music practitioner and end of life doula
After their son died, her parents moved to Cambria, so she moved there even though Cambria was “not my intention.” Still, she met a man, a social worker at Atascadero State Mental Hospital, and they planned to marry. Tragedy struck again.
“Little did I know that it was going to turn into a disaster,” she said. “This guy was bipolar, and he was in denial about it. He was self-medicating, and he committed suicide.”
Two of her closest college friends also committed suicide.
“It was just a horrendously difficult time to come back from being in another country for so long, and having to rebuild everything again,” she admitted. “When he passed away, when he was gone, that’s when I really kind of started my new life, and Cafe Musique came into my life.”
Cafe Musique was a wildly successful “wild classical” ensemble that blended Gypsy jazz, swing, tango, and folk music, with Albanese’s violin front and center. The group was in full force from 2007 to 2020, and in 2010, she met her wife, Amber.
“I’m pansexual,” she explained. “A pansexual is just somebody who is a humanist who falls in love with humans regardless of their sex, gender, or identification.”
Cafe Musique became her identity, though she continued her concert work. Today, she remains the concertmaster of Orchestra Novo, the Lompoc Pops Orchestra, and the Santa Maria Philharmonic.
She reached another crossroads in 2020 when bandmember Duane Inglish decided to quit Cafe Musique to spend more time with his family, and then COVID hit, knocking the wind out of musicians’ sails. Albanese managed to eke out a living giving in-person, masked, and socially distanced concerts. During these concerts, her future as a music therapist took form.
“At the time, I didn’t know that I was healing people with music,” she explained. “I really didn’t know that. And I decided that, at that moment, that this is what I was going to do.”
Hospice musician Chris O’Connell told Albanese about the Music for Healing and Transition program.
“I’d always wanted to be some type of music therapist, and I’d been reading and watching things on TV about the hospitals being completely full, the ERs, and then opening stadiums with cots, and putting up tents out in the parking lots of hospital,” Albanese recalled. “People have very easily forgotten about that. All the ventilators were gone. Gloves ran out. Masks ran out. It was insanely a horrific situation. People were dying and hospital staff were quitting. People were committing suicide.”
Taking classes online and being stuck at home during the pandemic also took their toll on her health.
“We were eating a lot at home, and I was getting bigger and bigger, and I was getting sicker and sicker. I did not know how much my body was suffering from gaining so much weight during COVID,” she explained.
This sent her on a weight loss journey that saw her lose 100 pounds, resulting in better health and more energy to devote to her new calling. After completing her certification, she realized something important.
“I was a little bit obsessed with death because so many people were dying. I had lost so many people in my life, really important people. I had been reading about these death companions, about how to give someone a good death. Can you have a good death?”
She started a fundraising campaign and collected enough in donations to take the International End-of-Life Doula Association course, becoming a certified death doula, the counterpart to a doula who works in child birthing. Albanese continues to fundraise for her practice through Ecologistics.
You can now find her in Dignity Health facilities playing her violin or her new instrument, the Native American flute
“I have five of them, and I have begun to play at meditation sessions,” she said. “I taught myself how to play these flutes, and they are an integral, extremely important part of my work because I use them a lot for transition support music, for people who are at the end of their lives.” ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in May 21-28, 2026.
