At VA, Tucson pianist, 85, helps ease the pain

By Johanna Willett ,Arizona Daily Star

 Aug. 24, 2016

The hubbub of a hospital lobby does not faze Joe Schifano Sr. as his fingers scale piano keys, music mingling with the murmur of a Monday morning.

Every week, Schifano, 85, volunteers in the Southern Arizona VA Health Care System’s main lobby. Wheelchairs roll by. Physicians stride past. Schifano plays on.

He has ears only for his piano, but he cannot miss the pain.

“It seems like I am contributing to a respite for them in that I play music,” he says of the hurting people he sees in the hospital. “Sometimes they are very appreciative and come up and give me a big hug.”

In the two years he has played at the hospital every Monday, a few grateful listeners have brought him tokens of thanks such as candy or fruit. He won’t take money.

“You can bring me all the fruit you want,” he laughs. “Just don’t throw it at me.”

HEALING HIS HEART

Schifano personally knows what music can do for a hurting heart. More than 10 years ago, he watched his wife of 50 years, Ana Schifano, fade to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. She died in 2007.

While the couple still lived independently, a caregiver would spend the day with Ana, giving Schifano a break.

He would slip out to run errands, inevitably ending up at a music store where he would pass the time “banging on keyboards.”

Schifano had played piano throughout his adult life, using the instrument as a way to relax following a day of work as a food broker. For about 15 years, his Tucson business represented Mexican shrimp packers and coordinated their shipments around the country.

Piano was always a hobby, nothing more.

And then Ana got sick.

“I had always wanted to make her a recording, and she loved my music,” Schifano says.

He packed 36 songs onto his first CD, which he completed in time to share with his wife. She loved it.

“With dementia, I kind of lost her before I lost her,” he says, recounting how her moments shifted between coherent and confused.

He remembers one instance where his music inspired others to sing and dance.

Rather than join in, Ana “got very upset with me and got a box of Kleenex and started throwing Kleenex at me, saying, ‘Stop it. Stop it.’”

But he didn’t. In the future, he just positioned her chair so she could see only him.

He brought music to the group homes where she lived.

And when Ana died, Schifano kept playing.

MUSIC IN THE MILITARY

Every day Schifano plays piano for two or three hours — one of the conveniences of living alone.

He suspects that he has between 200 and 300 songs memorized. He doesn’t read sheet music. He plays by ear tunes from the 1930s through the 1960s.

The big band music from the ’40s is his favorite. It takes him back to the era he grew up in. Not to say that he loved the piano back then.

“I took a piano lesson when I was about 12 years old and was bored out of my skull,” he says. “I was playing scales and chords, so I quit.”

Schifano’s family moved from Michigan to Tucson in 1945, and about a year after his 1948 Tucson High School graduation, he joined the Army.

The Korean War whisked Schifano to Okinawa, Japan, where he learned the art of entertaining.

“I hooked up with a bunch of guys and we joined up with the USO and traveled all over, playing in camps and entertaining the troops,” he says.

Schifano, the business manager for the group, remembers when their truck broke down in the middle of an Okinawa village one night. With nothing to do but wait for backup, the group started practicing.

The arrival of a second vehicle interrupted the melody and flooded the area with light, revealing a crowd of silent villagers, listening to the music.

“It was the biggest audience we ever had,” says Schifano, who served for about three years before attending the University of Arizona. “And we were just playing by ourselves in the middle of nowhere.”

FINDING NEW PURPOSE

When the loss of Ana propelled Schifano to the piano, he rediscovered the performer within.

 “It has been really wonderful to see him emerge from the dark days of the loss of his beloved wife to where he is enjoying life, traveling and entertaining,” says brother Al Schifano, a retired priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson.

Before Ana’s death, a therapist Schifano met with at the VA hospital encouraged him to participate in the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival.

Playing tunes from Broadway, Schifano triumphed in the local piano competition and then went on to win a bronze medal in the national contest in 2008.

In 2009, he took home the silver medal.

“I skipped the third year thinking, ‘I don’t want to be greedy,’” Schifano says, laughing. “But then in 2011, I went back at it again and won a gold medal.”

He earned another bronze in 2015.

“My piano playing has brought me to a different part of life I never thought I would get to,” he says, noting that he finds a piano even when he travels.

When he plays, Schifano often wears his favorite necktie — a blue and purple number with a row of piano keys stretching down from the collar, two hands poised to make music. He wore it when he played piano in a Budapest hotel and again in a cruise ship restaurant as the boat rounded Cape Horn.

“It’s not only a form of relaxation, but after my mom passed away, I think it was actually critical in his healing stages,” says son Joe Schifano, the president and CEO of Dependable Health Services. Both the younger Joe Schifano and his brother Izzy Schifano have seen piano transform their father from a shy man into an outgoing entertainer.

The elder Schifano also kept making CDs, which he hands out for free to family, friends and fans.

“He is a veteran and understands the difficulties of coming back from war and dealing with emotions,” says Kelly Dolan, the volunteer services assistant and co-chair of the Creative Arts Program at the Tucson VA hospital. “We will miss the atmosphere he brings. … It’s jazzy.”

In October, Schifano will retire from his weekly hospital gig to free up more time to perform in retirement homes around Tucson with karaoke singer Joe Dimercurio and accordionist Ernie Minchella. They call their trio Tre Amici.

“What happens with my music is I get so buried into it that I could be playing by myself, or I could be playing with a room of 200 people,” he says. “It makes no difference. I’m zoned out. It’s me and the music.”

Al Schifano, 78, manages Tre Amici and has seen the trio get feet tapping and hands clapping in retirement communities where a familiar song can break the doldrums of dementia.

“I just think it’s his way of not only giving to people, but also staying connected with the love of his life,” Al Schifano says.

In music, Joe Schifano now finds his purpose.

“It’s a good cause for me still being around,” he says. “I’m 85 years old and a lot of my friends are already gone, and the circle is getting very small. It’s keeping me going.”

So on he plays

http://tucson.com/entertainment/music/at-va-tucson-pianist-helps-ease-the-pain/article_6aac26aa-c6d1-5100-83a0-7096c129925e.html