Between 2009-2019 Kevin Komisaruk maintained a private practice as a bedside palliative care musician in both hospital and hospice, advocating for the relevance of advanced music-interpretation skills in developing performance-based therapeutic music interventions for pain and anxiety. He performed for palliative individuals at Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital, Dorothy Ley Hospice, Hill House Hospice, Hospice Thornhill, Hazel Burns Hospice, Baycrest Hospital, and the Toronto East General Hospital. More recently he has presented palliative care workshops for the Hospice Palliative Care Teams of the Central Ontario Health Integration Network, Hospice Palliative Care Ontario, the Canadian Association for Music Therapy, and as a keynote speaker for the Calgary Instrumental Society.
At the University of Toronto he mentors students in re-visioning, re-configuring, and re-purposing traditional performance training for new contexts, of which palliative care is but one among many.
In 2011, as a founding core faculty member of the Music and Health Research Collaboratory at the University of Toronto he developed both undergraduate and graduate-level performance-based palliative care music curriculum for the Faculty of Music. In addition to providing applied masterclass training and guest lectures with clinical professionals in palliative care, this curriculum surveyed foundational work of Cecily Saunders, Balfour Mount, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, Eric Cassell, Philip Larkin, Diane Meier, Mary Vachon, among others. Over 100 performance students experienced the performance-based palliative care curriculum including numerous practicum placements in hospice and institutional palliative care facilities throughout Toronto and Peel Region.