At the beginning of 2024, Brian Schreck, a board-certified music therapist, teacher, artist, and up-and-coming funeral director held a reflective discussion with his University of Pacific students around the Billy Eilish song “What Was I Made For.'' The question he asked — “Why are you here?” — also became a question for himself.

The answer: “I think it’s to help people.”

When Schreck was 8 or 9 years old, he spent time at the former Northfield nursing home in East Louisville with his mother, who volunteered there. Simultaneously, Schreck had started taking saxophone lessons, which he practiced for in the day room.

“People weren’t particularly that interested, but once it went on a little longer, this man woke up, he looked at me — and started dancing,” Schreck said. “That was a moment in my little life where I realized — [I was] changing the environment and inspired this man to dance.”

After graduating from Ballard High School, Schreck began his journey to becoming a music therapist, a career he said was built on that realization he had in the nursing home. “Music has a strange power of helping people — especially when it’s played or created in places where it’s usually not,” he said.

Schreck graduated from the Berklee College of Music in Boston with a B.A. in music therapy in 2002 and got his masters from New York University in 2004. From there, he began what would become a nearly 20-year-long career working in places most people avoid — hospitals.

But if there’s one thing you should know about Schreck, it’s that he’s typically doing things other people avoid. “There’s a bit of a calling that has to be inside you or it’s going to be excruciating all of the time. You have to believe in it for others to believe in it,” he said.

Schreck was not your typical music therapist either — and not just because on any given day you can find him dressed in colorful button-ups paired with bow ties or pastel suit jackets. “I know things are historically done a certain way — but I think you also have to have this kind of fearlessness and artistic freedom to say, you know what, I think this could be done differently, and then actually doing it,” he said.

Outside of hospitals and funeral homes, Schreck is also a local musician. He plays regularly with other artists like Lacey Gutherie, recorded albums with Relaay, Drift City, Victoria (Tory Fisher), Roadie (pictured here), and Howell Dawdy + plays in a new band called Giant Dunes. | Photo via Brian Schreck

Which is how Schreck came to pioneer heartbeat recordings, a medical music therapy that uses patient’s heartbeats to create musical compositions. An innovative therapy that’s now used in 80+ medical centers across the US and has been featured in People, Today, NPR, and was the focal point of a 2023 documentary “The Beat of the Heart.”

Now Schreck is pivoting from working with terminally ill patients to helping people plan their funerals.

“I feel alive. I feel happy — like I’m supposed to be here. I’ve learned from all the sick people I've been with, and what I would hear over and over again is 'do the things you want to do now and don’t wait for the time you're supposed to do it.' I knew it would be a challenging pivot, but I have enough energy to start something new right now and I don’t want to wait,” he said.

For the last two years, Schreck has been apprenticing with Ratterman & Sons Funeral Home in Louisville and will become a licensed funeral director next fall.

In July, he reached level two of his apprenticeship, which was celebrated with a cake. | Photo via Ratterman & Sons Funeral Home

Schreck is already approaching funerals through an artistic lens, offering services like Legacy Recordings and Rhythm Reflections, an evolution of his heartbeat recordings. Legacy Recordings preserve a person's voice, which is typically the first thing people forget after someone dies. Do we have a citation for this last sentence? Feels like a scientific or sociological claim.

Here’s a quick look at things that can be recorded:

Milestone messages to be played on special days like birthdays, anniversaries, and weddings
Favorite stories, like narrating a storybook
Important scripture passages
Words of wisdom, advice + mottos
Timeless tales interview, a personally designed reflection made up of nine questions

“We can do whatever you wish,” he said. Recently, he recorded a man introducing his own funeral. “People were startled to hear his voice at the start of the funeral, it changed the whole vibe.”

He’s also interested in personalizing visitations to a person, like switching the traditional instrumental music to the person’s favorite music — and turning it up. “No one is really enjoying being here, so how can we make it all about them, and not like the same room someone else was in not too long ago,” he said.

Schreck is hopeful that these kinds of upfront, individualized services, which to his knowledge aren't being done at any other funeral homes in the country, will impact people positively on a typically sad day. “I think if you approach it differently than before, you will have a whole different experience after,” he said.