University News

The Music Beat: UVA Health’s Motorcycle-Riding, Piano-Playing Reverend

Kyle Clements admits he’s not a normal person. Other people have been telling him as much for years.

“I said, ‘Well, what a compliment,’” Clements remembered.

A Baptist preacher who loves riding his motorcycle as much as he loves playing the piano might seem odd, but it was the combination of his hobbies and a motorcycle crash that fractured his leg that led Clements to perform music for patients and visitors at the UVA Health University Medical Center and the Emily Couric Clinical Cancer Center.

In June 2023, Clements hit a tree while riding his motorcycle. He broke his right leg and was transported to UVA Health. There, doctors discovered that he also had lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. Around the same time, his wife learned she had uterine cancer. Shortly thereafter, he began immunotherapy treatments, while his wife received chemotherapy – all of which meant he was spending a lot of time in the hospital.

“My wife was having her treatment, so I’m just roaming around the hospital, and I went over to the piano in the main hospital,” Clements said. “There was a young lady named Samantha that was playing the piano.”

That was Samantha Wang, a current second-year student at UVA. Clements complimented her on her playing, saying it was a more complicated piece of music than he thought he could play, and he had been playing piano on and off since 1958.

He told her he could only play one song without looking at the sheet music, a hymn called “Jesus Loves Me.”

Wang invited him to play the song.

“I was like, ‘OK, why don’t you switch seats with me, and you can play the song that you have memorized?’” Wang said.

She became his audience, but other people passing through the lobby soon joined her.

“He grabs everyone’s attention when he plays. People get emotional, they tear up while he plays, or they’ll sing along,” Wang said.

Wang connected Clements with UVA Health’s LaDelle Gay, who oversees the lobby music program with fellow volunteer coordinator Maureen Oswald.

Volunteers in the lobby music program go through an interview and audition process to make sure they’re a good fit; Clements was.

“He’s a delightful soul,” Gay said. “We had a wonderful conversation, then we scheduled a time for him to play, and the rest is history.”

Clements now plays piano in the lobbies of the University Medical Center and the Emily Couric Clinical Cancer Center about once a week, sometimes more often, even as he and his wife continue their treatments. That’s quite an undertaking for a man who never wanted to learn piano in the first place.

“In 1958, boys didn’t want to learn how to play the piano, but I did not have a choice because Mama said, ‘You will play,’” Clements said.

Portrait of Kyle Clements playing piano.

As a volunteer with the lobby music program, Clements plays piano at UVA Health University Medical Center and the Emily Couric Clinical Cancer Center about once a week. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)

After he stopped taking lessons, he found himself truly enjoying playing piano, as his faith became a bigger part of his life. Clements, an Orange County resident, still plays at churches around the area in addition to his volunteer shifts.

“He’s unique in his passion for this. It’s not necessarily an easy thing to do,” Gay said.

Clements is only the second person to simultaneously volunteer and receive treatment at the hospital, but he says there are plenty of rewards for playing.

“It’s not about me, but it’s been really good for me in the midst of my wife’s cancer treatments and my situation, too. It’s been an opportunity for me to just do something about it,” Clements said.

His desire to improve his situation helped Wang, too. She and Clements text back and forth, and she tries to drop by when she knows he’s playing. Wang is a certified nursing assistant, and Clements inspired her to start working in the oncology unit at UVA Health.

Portrait of Samantha Wang, left and Kyle Clements in middle and LaDelle Gay, right.

Samantha Wang, left, is a second-year UVA student who met Clements while she was playing piano at UVA Health University Medical Center. Wang introduced Clements to UVA Health’s LaDelle Gay, right, who oversees the lobby music program with fellow volunteer coordinator Maureen Oswald. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)

Shortly after Wang’s grandfather died of cancer, Clements texted her that his cancer was shrinking.

“It gave me hope that not everyone’s stories have the worst ending. I work on an emotionally difficult unit, but he gives me a hopeful perspective for my patients,” Wang said.

Clements said he’s only doing what he’s supposed to do.

“It’s just part of my purpose,” he said.