String Quartet Honours SCIL

Sunnybrook staff and patients enjoyed a beautiful concert performed by a string quartet in the Sunnybrook Centre for Independent Living (SCIL) clinic area on Tuesday, November 25, 2008.

The concert was generously arranged by Kent Teeple, a musician with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO), who offered the exceptional hour of music to staff and patients in SCIL as a token of his gratitude for the prosthetic services offered to him by SCIL staff.

Kent was born with a condition that led to the amputation of his legs below the knee at the age of three and fitted for his first pair of prosthetics at the age of five. He has been receiving prosthetic care at Sunnybrook for the past three years.

“I have always wanted to play at Sunnybrook,” Kent says. “Without SCIL, my life would have been lonelier, and a lot more difficult. I find that being a part of this place makes you feel supported.”

The Amaro Quartet, in which Kent plays the viola, performs in the community for nursing homes, high schools, hospitals, film festivals and recently, the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health (CAMH). The quartet belongs to a program called Music Reaches Out, which consists of musicians from the TSO who support and fund each other as they perform in the community in their spare time.

“There is always someone who comes up afterward and says, ‘I never knew it sounded so beautiful’,“ notes Kent. “That is what makes it worth-while.”

The other three members of The Amaro Quartet include violinists Amalia Joanou-Canzoneri and Anjelique Toews, and cellist Audrey King.