Music Is a Doctor

Before she joined them on stage, Kaiya Gamble was a fan of CRESCENDO.

“I saw it before I performed it,” said Gamble, a 19-year-old Calgary singer-songwriter who received a golden ticket to audition for Season 22 (2024) of American Idol when she was 17.

CRESCENDO is a hybrid, multi-media experience that blends a selection of classic rock and pop tunes performed by some of the province's top vocalists, accompanied by an 80-piece orchestra, a band, and a 150-person choir.

The music is interspersed with storytelling from young people and their families sharing their personal journeys to help raise awareness and break down the stigma surrounding mental health.

The final element of every performance of CRESCENDO is the audience, Gamble remembers.

“You see yourself up there,” she said. “You hear about their (mental health) experiences. You dance and laugh and maybe cry –– and it’s all at the Jack Singer Concert Hall, one of my favourite venues in the city.”

Another one of those audience members over the years has been Strathmore resident Dave Ericson.

“I’ve been going almost from the start,” said Ericson. “ I just think it’s a little bit underappreciated, considering what you get: an 80-piece orchestra, a band, great singers and great stories.

“It’s mind-blowing.”

‘Don’t tell anyone’

The event is a fundraiser for mental health initiatives supported through the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation.

It was launched in 2017 by Edmonton’s John Cameron –– there’s also a CRESCENDO Edmonton event –– but in a phone interview, Cameron said the genesis of the show really came when he was a teenager.

“At 11:13 a.m. April 1, 1984,” he said, “I got a call at school that my dad was in hospital and had attempted suicide.

“My mom was there (at the hospital). My sister was there. Dad wasn’t conscious yet but finally he came around and the first thing he said was, “Don’t tell anyone about this.

“Don’t tell your uncle. Don’t tell Keller (Construction), where he worked. Keep it a secret.”

“That really resonated with me,” Cameron added, “and in 2016, I thought, I want to create a show at the Winspear (in Edmonton) and the Jack Singer (in Calgary) where people can talk about their mental health and we’ll play some of the piano greats and some of the rock greats.

"The whole plan was to have people come and talk about their struggles with mental health.”

The show features an irresistible songbook including classic rockers like Bon Jovi, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Billy Joel, as well as more contemporary artists like Coldplay and Benson Boone –– and unforgettable stories.

Just don’t call it a concert.

“It’s more than that,” Cameron said. “When I started in 2017, it was about getting loud for mental health. Amazing songs. Get people dancing. Clapping. Laughing. Singing. Crying.

“It’s a night of hope, really.”

‘A highlight reel of their lives’

Now Gamble experiences CRESCENDO from up onstage –– and for an emerging artist who grew up attending concerts at the Jack Singer Concert Hall, it’s quite a vantage point to be on that stage, looking out at the crowd, backed up by a full orchestra.

Last year, she sang Bill Wither’s Lean on Me and the year before, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

“It’s something as a kid I dreamed about,” Gamble said. “I played the French horn as a kid and now there’s a French horn in the orchestra!”

Gamble has been writing songs since she was nine –– and raising money for charity. That first tune came about when her step-grandmother was hospitalized with cancer, and Gamble sold home-made cookies –– Kaiya’s Cookies for Cancer ––to raise funds for the palliative ward at Foothills Medical Centre.

“One of my first songs was about her,” Gamble said. “And when I got to play it for her before she passed, I really realized the power of music.”

After winning that golden ticket to audition for American Idol –– she was one of 150 selected from 60,000 applicants –– she didn’t ultimately make it onto the show, but that didn’t dampen her musical drive.

She has continued writing and recording, spending last summer in Montreal writing with professional songwriters and meeting with executives from Universal Music about the next steps to take in her musical career.

This summer, she’s releasing her first EP.

But as exciting as the musical stuff is, she is aware that a lot of people in her Gen Z age bracket struggle.

That social awareness came from what the Gamble family talked about around the dinner table at the end of the day.

“My mom is an emergency room doctor, and my dad is a helicopter pilot for STARS Air Ambulance,” she said. “And they didn’t leave anything out about what went on at work, so I was always aware that there are a lot of people who go through a lot of stuff.”

With so much conversation taking place these days about mental health and the impact social media has on young people, Gamble says she sees it everywhere.

“I’ve seen the impact social media has had on friends and peers,” she said. “So many suffer in silence. And you never would know.”

But eventually, she says, you find out.

“They say, I’m struggling. Social media is so truly a highlight reel (of someone’s life),” she said.

With her social media –– she has more than 60,000 Instagram followers –– Gamble aims to keep it real.

“I try to be as transparent as possible,” she said. “I try to be goofy."

And if there’s a ray of hope in the conversation about the huge impact of social media on young people’s mental health, it’s that goofy is showing up more these days, she says.

“There are influencers doing that too –– and artists too,” she adds.

“Momentum is shifting (in terms of social media content),” she added. "Artists that are connecting with people are authentic about who they are.”

‘Something big happened during COVID’

Ericson, who’s the principal consultant at Hillcrest Financial, a group benefits firm, says data collected by Hillcrest aligns with the stories Gamble hears from her friends about deteriorating mental health.

What’s new is that Generation Z, in ever-larger numbers, are willing to talk about it.

“We track usage psychology,” he said. “Following COVID, there was an exponential rise in claims. People are talking and getting help. There’s no stigma for them (Gen Z).

“It gives me hope for the next generation,” he says. “We’re just waking up to the need for mental health.

“The next generation could (ultimately) be more resilient –– we’re still not fully comprehending the fallout from COVID and what it did to people’s mental health,” he said.

“And when you hear from people like Kaiya or John Cameron about their struggles with mental health, it gives us permission to go back to our workspaces and talk about it.

“It’s top-down –– show your staff that mental health is important,” he said.

As far as raising funds to support mental health resources, Ericson said the math to get help has grown daunting for many.

“Something big happened during COVID, and it has not gone away,” he said. “Costs of claims have gone up to $250 an hour for psychologists, which is double what it was before COVID,” he said.

“We have got a supply problem when it comes to qualified psychologists.”

For Cameron, there’s a gap between the cost of getting help for mental health and the availability of coverage to help people pay for it.

“The government needs to get more involved,” Cameron says. “We need more places for people to go. We’re seeing young people get treatment –– and a lot of (employer health coverage) is only $250, $300 a year (for mental health treatment) –– and you need a lot more than one session to get anything out of it.

“The government says they are doing something, but I haven’t seen it yet. We have to keep feet to the fire.

“We need spaces, access, clinicians, and affordable rates.”

Power of song

For Gamble, it will be the 19-year-old’s third performance at a CRESCENDO event.

It might seem kind of jarring to have singers who were born in the 21st century performing material created in the 1970s, but Gamble has an affinity for music of that era.

It’s the music that was played around the Gamble house growing up in Calgary.

“Mom listened to U2,” she said. “I’m a big fan of them, too. I fell in love with them.

“Dad listened to Earth, Wind & Fire, Fleetwood Mac, Hall & Oates. Yacht Rock-y things. The Doobies! I love What a Fool Believes! It’s one of my favourites!”

For Ericson, who is strictly an audience member, the feeling about the power of music is mutual –– even if he wasn’t too keen to sing at the 2025 concert.

“(Host) John Cameron put a mic in my face,” he said. “I think the song was (Bon Jovi’s) Living on a Prayer.”

At that point, the whole place was singing along, so Ericson let it rip.

“It’s a lot of fun. People coming down the aisles,” he said. “It’s a great night out. There’s nothing else like it. The orchestra, the band, those singers –– and now, a 150-piece choir.

“It gets a little bigger every year, too. The first year the choir played –– they were way up –– they stood and sang and it was wow. I think that's my favourite part.”

Cameron says part of the power of the choir comes from the work CRESCENDO artistic director and conductor Emmanuel Fonte does with it.

“It’s remarkable to hear how he shapes the way they perform,” he says.

CRESCENDO might be more than a concert, but it turns out that music is just as much part of the healing process as the entertainment.

“Music is a doctor,” Cameron says. “We talk about it in the show. Whether it’s singing or an instrument. The artistic side does something (very healing) to your brain.”

CRESCENDO takes place March 21 in the Jack Singer Hall at Werklund Centre.

All images provided by CRESCENDO.