In the early days of the Healing Arts Project, Jeff Kaye struggled with the initiative’s mission of “soothing mind, body and soul a note at a time” as he played for hospital patients and staff. Created under the umbrella of JK Productions, the holistic production company started by Jeff and his wife, Joanna, the first Healing Arts performances were in the halls, lobby and waiting rooms of Boca Raton Regional Hospital. But it was also at Boca Regional where Jeff played one final trumpet performance for his mother before she passed away.
“It was bittersweet in the beginning,” Jeff says of starting the initiative. “It was really challenging to put those emotions in check. I didn’t look forward to going in the beginning; I wanted to send in my players.”
But he remembers the exact moment when that changed. Jeff was playing in the hospital lobby when restrictions had eased slightly during the COVID pandemic, and a woman approached him, visibly upset, and asked that he play for her father upstairs. Jeff got permission to set up outside the room to play, and the sounds of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” drifted through the hospital halls. The next day, when the father was released into hospice care, Jeff got a call from the woman, who asked that he play for her father again. It had to be that day, she said, as he might not make it to the next. That night, Jeff came out and played some more Sinatra tunes, and the father passed days later.
“It was that night when I realized how powerful this is, and I said to Joanna, ‘This is going to be my mission. This is bigger than us.’ And I think we both kind of had those ‘a-ha’ moments,” says Jeff.
Since that night, Healing Arts has expanded to Bethesda Hospital East under the umbrella of the hospital’s “Healing Through Music” program, for which it was awarded a $100,000 grant from Impact 100 Palm Beach County last year. The second phase of the grant will take them to Bethesda West and the Lynn Cancer Institute, and last year, Healing Arts reorganized as a nonprofit to raise funds for their future plans, of which Jeff has many.
A few of the “nexts” that Jeff envisions include playing for hospice centers and pediatric wards, and bringing in other artistic mediums beyond music. But if Jeff is the engine of Healing Arts, always driving toward new opportunities, Joanna is the hand that steadies the wheel and keeps the show on the road.
“I owe a lot to this woman, because she tends to rein me in,” says Jeff of his wife. “Because I tend to wake up and I’m looking in three directions, and then she kind of pulls the reins in and handles the administration and delegating.”
Joanna’s aptitude behind the scenes—informed by her role as executive director of Festival of the Arts Boca and as the host of a local public radio program on classical music for 15 years—extends to the stage, too, lending her voice to Healing Arts performances, which range from ‘60s folk to modern pop hits.
“It stretches you as a musician to be able to just jump into anything,” says Joanna. “I could sing a classical piece; I could sing Pat Benatar’s ‘Hit Me With Your Best Shot’ in the same day.”
Jeff and Joanna agree that it takes a rare kind of musician to fulfill the mission of Healing Arts. Jeff, as the former principal trumpet for the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra and Boca Symphonia (of which he is a founder), has played in all manner of packed concert halls, a talent that he’s found doesn’t always translate to playing a hospital room.
“We’ve had musicians come in who I thought would be a perfect fit, or the best players, but weren’t a perfect fit for Healing Arts,” says Jeff, and Joanna explains that a Healing Arts visit is about more than just the music, likening their role to that of a chaplain.
“We’re talking to the whole person, and we always ask what kind of music they want to hear instead of playing what we want to play,” she says. “We want to know that we’re making a connection, doing something that’s meaningful for them.
“I tell people all the time, until you can be there in one of those situations and experience the impact, it’s really difficult to explain. I’ve been brought to tears many times. It’s so moving.”
This story is from the March 2026 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
