Purple Songs Can Fly Project: Mission

Purple Songs Can Fly Project

Purple Songs Can Fly is a unique project that provides a musical outlet for the many children being treated for cancer and blood disorders at Texas Children’s Cancer Center and their siblings. In this program, which is the first of its kind, the children work with Anita Kruse and other professional composers to write and record their own songs. Using the latest technology in an in-house studio, composers work with the children individually or in small groups to compose, record, and burn songs to disc within short sessions.

These children are given a highly creative, much needed musical environment to express the many and varied thoughts and feelings that will surely emerge during this time. The children are then able to share their music with friends and family in the form of individual CD recordings of their songs. Because music and singing are known to be beneficial in the healing process, it is the hope that the process of creating, singing and recording original songs will provide health benefits in addition to a sense of pride and joy.

Purple Songs not only can Fly, but do fly. The children’s songs are copied on purple CDs and flown by participating passengers, pilots or astronauts to places on earth and into space. The CDs then fly back to Houston, signed, with all flight information included.

As the dreams, wishes, thoughts, feelings, and imaginations of these children take wing through the creativity of music, it is the vision of Purple Songs Can Fly that soaring, flying, and rising above the obstacles of illness can truly become a reality as each purple song that flies creates a tangible symbol for the hope of healing.

The Purple Songs Can Fly Project
is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization
incorporated in the state of Texas.
All donations are tax deductible.

Purple Songs Can Fly Founder & Executive Director

Anita Kruse

Purple Songs Can Fly Composers

Anita Kruse
Sandy Stewart

Purple Songs Can Fly Board of Directors

Suzy La Forge - President
Pam Reiland - Vice President/Treasurer
Susan Rafte - Secretary

Purple Songs Can Fly Advisory Board

Lynn Abruzzo, M.D., Ph.D.
Margit Winstrom, M.D.
Diane Marks
Patricia Allen
Andy Bradley
Regina Elliott Conway
Tony Endieveri
Betsy Johnson
Dean Kruse
Randy Miller
Trish Morille
Vickie Pierce
Lisa Sheinbaum
Sandy Stewart
Dan Workman

Purple Songs Can Fly Founders Circle

The Clayton Fund
Dean & Kathryn Kruse
Robbie Parrish
Regina & John Conway
Diane Marks
Dorothy Mackey Lurie
Ava & Cordell Haymon Fund
Kathryn Sherman & The Sherman Foundation
Rae & Christian Hill
Laura & Michael Puzio
Suzy La Forge
Terry Huffington
The Hobbit Cafe
Raymond Edmonds
Forrest & Mary Ellen Edmonds
Darren Greenwood
Pam & Michael Reiland
Dr. & Mrs. Frank Weiner
Susan & Alan Rafte
Carolyn Keating
Vickie Pierce
Trish & Rock Morille
Lori, Dave & Andria Levitt
Jim & Patricia Allen
Jennifer Keeney & Joe Teague
Stan Kruse
Ken & Lorraine White
Sonja Bruzauskas & Houston Haymon
Dr. Roy & Lisa Sheinbaum
Sandra Lowery
David & Kelley Tobin
Eva Milligan
Wilbur & Marie Hall
Jan Fox
Inga Alanne
Mr. & Mrs. Steven W. Boone
Jim & Joan Miller
Ed & Marie Bosarge
Phoebe Welsh
Robert & Kristin Gauntt
Anne Loo & Brad Nyberg

Purple Songs Can Fly Donors

Dr. Mary Ann Richardson
Patricia & Jim Allen
Michael Hall
Dr. Margit Winstrom
Michael Daugherty & Yopie Prins
Charla Wilson
Carol & Bob Koehne
GiGi & Jose Valera
Karen Temple Hughes
Stephen Friedlander
Dr. David and June Poplack
Burdine Johnson
K. Austin & Associates
Steven D. Arnold
Divas World Productions
Hunter Ontiveros
Carousel
Carol & Martin Appelbaum
Seth & Karen Lerner
John & Renee Harkins
Brad & Deborah Sondock
Marie Bosarge
Roz Bryant
Rita S. Cheng
Amy Pass
Hilary Suzawa
Susan Krause
Brigitta U. Muelle
Betty Reeves
Carol Benefield

The Purple Songs Can Fly Project was inspired by the songwriting students of Anita Kruse through the years...including....

Alice Alsup
Anna Margaret Jones
Samantha Kirshon
Megan La Forge
Katherine Morille
Luke Morille
Marika Rafte

Why Purple?

Purple can activate a child's creativity and imagination.

Purple is associated with...

Courage, Confidence, Conquering, Protection, Safety, Mastery, Dignity, Strength, Power, Creativity, Wisdom, Intuition, Understanding, Gratitude, Healing, Spirituality, Empathy and the sense of service to others.

A combination of blue and red, purple is often considered the ideal color.

Blue is calming and expansive, while red is active and grounding. Red brings focus to the expansiveness of blue, and allows creativity to emerge. For this reason, purple is associated with inspiration and imagination.

Purple is said to link the individual and the universal.

Many children love the color purple.

Imagination Meets Reality

The Purple Songs Can Fly Project
Imagination Meets Reality

Several years ago I began performing at Texas Children’s Hospital as a visiting artist with the Arts in Medicine program at Texas Children’s Cancer Center. I have believed for a long time that creativity and healing are intertwined, so performing on a pediatric cancer floor was a chance to see how music and other arts related activities impact the environment. The doctors, nurses and staff at Texas Children’s Hospital are very supportive of the extensive arts programs there, and it seems to be a shared belief that creativity enhances life and has the potential to have a very powerful influence in the lives of children who are ill.

At Texas Children's Cancer Center, many visual artists and writers work with the children one on one, but a one on one musical experience had not been created in the clinic, and this is what led to my idea.

I’d been working with children over the years to write their own songs, and I'd often take them into a professional studio to record. A few years ago, I set up a small home studio for my own composing, and then began using the equipment to record my students' songs and pieces during their lessons. Writing and recording songs with my students had been a process that took place as a part of their piano lessons and usually extended from week to week. In 2004, my student, Samantha Kirshon, started working with me in lessons on songs alone. When she easily wrote and recorded an original song in her one hour lesson, I began to see new possibilities. Because the technology had improved so much in recent years, songs could be written and recorded easily and quickly and at a relatively high level in a small home studio, and then burned to a disc.. This led to the idea of recreating my purple studio in the Hospital, where children could write and record their own songs, then leave the hospital with a CD in hand.

I made a proposal to Carol Herron, the Director of the Arts in Medicine program in December of 2004 and we began the process of creating a unique experience for the children being treated at Texas Children’s Cancer Center and their siblings.

The Purple Songs Can Fly Project was founded, and I began working with the first child on March 8, 2006.

As far as we know, there has never been a recording studio on a pediatric cancer floor.

In 2003, a song that I wrote for September 11th, If We Can Fly to the Moon, ended up flying on the Endeavor Shuttle Mission with Astronaut, John Herrington. Having a song fly so far (over 5 million miles around the earth) was such a great thrill, that I decided to have the songs the children write at the hospital fly as well. I envisioned them flying to interesting places around the world….and one day, maybe even into space.

Now that the project has begun, and I am working with the children each week, the vision and the reality have come together to create an outcome that is even more powerful than I could have forseen. I feel very blessed to be able to help these children express through music what may never have emerged in quite the same way, and I continue to be amazed by what is waiting in each child's imagination.

I do believe….

There's a song inside, every single child....waiting to be heard....

May 2006
Anita Kruse