[humanser] music therapists

[JD Townsend]

Hello Alicia:
This is exactly the correct NFB list for you as a music therapist. Welcome.


We incorporate all the array of therapies and services, so it ought to be a 
good list. Recent posts have focused on finding work, interviewing and 
identifying how electronic records can be worked with using blindness 
technology and techniques.


I love music therapy, but know no one practicing as a music therapist here 
in the Daytona Beach area.


Hopefully one of the others on this list can be more helpful.


Below is an interesting article that touches on the importance of music in 
our lives.

JD
Hello Alicia:

Hello Alicia:
This is exactly the correct NFB list for you as a music therapist. Welcome.


We incorporate all the array of therapies and services, so it ought to be a 
good list. Recent posts have focused on finding work, interviewing and 
identifying how electronic records can be worked with using blindness 
technology and techniques.


I love music therapy, but know no one practicing as a music therapist here 
in the Daytona Beach area.


Hopefully one of the others on this list can be more helpful.


Below is an interesting article that touches on the importance of music in 
our lives.



This is exactly the correct NFB list for you as a music therapist.  Welcome.

New York Times Sunday Review Desk 2013 10
13
OPINION.  Is Music the Key to Success?.  By JOANNE LIPMAN.  A
co-author,   with Melanie Kupchynsky, of the book 'Strings
Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE trained to be a concert pianist.  Alan
Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a
professional clarinet and saxophone player.  The hedge fund
billionaire Bruce Kovner is a pianist who took classes at
Juilliard.
Multiple studies link music study to academic achievement.  But
what is it about serious music training that seems to correlate
with outsize success in other fields?.
The connection isn't a coincidence.  I know because I asked.  I
put the question to top-flight professionals in industries from
tech to finance to media, all of whom had serious (if often
little-known) past lives as musicians.  Almost all made a
connection between their music training and their professional
achievements.
The phenomenon extends beyond the math-music association.
Strikingly, many high achievers told me music opened up the
pathways to creative thinking.  And their experiences suggest
that music training sharpens other qualities: Collaboration.  The
ability to listen.  A way of thinking that weaves together
disparate ideas.  The power to focus on the present and the
future simultaneously.
Will your school music program turn your kid into a Paul Allen,
the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft (guitar)? Or a Woody
Allen (clarinet)? Probably not.  These are singular achievers.
But the way these and other visionaries I spoke to process music
is intriguing.  As is the way many of them apply music's lessons
of focus and discipline into new ways of thinking and
communicating -- even problem solving.
Look carefully and you'll find musicians at the top of almost any
industry.  Woody Allen performs weekly with a jazz band.  The
television broadcaster Paula Zahn (cello) and the NBC chief White
House correspondent Chuck Todd (French horn) attended college on
music scholarships; NBC's Andrea Mitchell trained to become a
professional violinist.  Both Microsoft's Mr.  Allen and the
venture capitalist Roger McNamee have rock bands.  Larry Page, a
co-founder of Google, played saxophone in high school.  Steven
Spielberg is a clarinetist and son of a pianist.  The former
World Bank president James D.  Wolfensohn has played cello at
Carnegie Hall.
It's not a coincidence,' says Mr.  Greenspan, who gave up jazz
clarinet but still dabbles at the baby grand in his living room.
I can tell you as a statistician, the probability that that is
mere chance is extremely small.  The cautious former Fed chief
adds, 'That's all that you can judge about the facts.  The
crucial question is: why does that connection exist?
Paul Allen offers an answer.  He says music 'reinforces your
confidence in the ability to create.  Mr.  Allen began playing
the violin at age 7 and switched to the guitar as a teenager.
Even in the early days of Microsoft, he would pick up his guitar
at the end of marathon days of programming.  The music was the
emotional analog to his day job, with each channeling a different
type of creative impulse.  In both, he says, 'something is
pushing you to look beyond what currently exists and express
yourself in a new way.
Mr.  Todd says there is a connection between years of practice
and competition and what he calls the 'drive for perfection.  The
veteran advertising executive Steve Hayden credits his background
as a cellist for his most famous work, the Apple '1984'
commercial depicting rebellion against a dictator.  I was
thinking of Stravinsky when I came up with that idea,' he says.
He adds that his cello performance background helps him work
collaboratively: 'Ensemble playing trains you, quite literally,
to play well with others, to know when to solo and when to
follow.
For many of the high achievers I spoke with, music functions as a
'hidden language,' as Mr.  Wolfensohn calls it, one that enhances
the ability to connect disparate or even contradictory ideas.
When he ran the World Bank, Mr.  Wolfensohn traveled to more than
100 countries, often taking in local performances (and
occasionally joining in on a borrowed cello), which helped him
understand 'the culture of people, as distinct from their balance
sheet.
It's in that context that the much-discussed connection between
math and music resonates most.  Both are at heart modes of
expression.  Bruce Kovner, the founder of the hedge fund Caxton
Associates and chairman of the board of Juilliard, says he sees
similarities between his piano playing and investing strategy; as
he says, both 'relate to pattern recognition, and some people
extend these paradigms across different senses.
Mr.  Kovner and the concert pianist Robert Taub both describe a
sort of synesthesia -- they perceive patterns in a
three-dimensional way.  Mr.  Taub, who gained fame for his
Beethoven recordings and has since founded a music software
company, MuseAmi, says that when he performs, he can 'visualize
all of the notes and their interrelationships,' a skill that
translates intellectually into making 'multiple connections in
multiple spheres.
For others I spoke to, their passion for music is more notable
than their talent.  Woody Allen told me bluntly, 'I'm not an
accomplished musician.  I get total traction from the fact that
I'm in movies.
Mr.  Allen sees music as a diversion, unconnected to his day job.
He likens himself to 'a weekend tennis player who comes in once a
week to play.  I don't have a particularly good ear at all or a
particularly good sense of timing.  In comedy, I've got a good
instinct for rhythm.  In music, I don't, really.
Still, he practices the clarinet at least half an hour every day,
because wind players will lose their embouchure (mouth position)
if they don't: 'If you want to play at all you have to practice.
I have to practice every single day to be as bad as I am.  He
performs regularly, even touring internationally with his New
Orleans jazz band.  I never thought I would be playing in concert
halls of the world to 5,000, 6,000 people,' he says.  I will say,
quite unexpectedly, it enriched my life tremendously.
Music provides balance, explains Mr.  Wolfensohn, who began cello
lessons as an adult.  You aren't trying to win any races or be
the leader of this or the leader of that.  You're enjoying it
because of the satisfaction and joy you get out of music, which
is totally unrelated to your professional status..
For Roger McNamee, whose Elevation Partners is perhaps best known
for its early investment in Facebook, 'music and technology have
converged,' he says..  He became expert on Facebook by using it
to promote his band, Moonalice, and now is focusing on video by
live-streaming its concerts.  He says musicians and top
professionals share 'the almost desperate need to dive deep.
This capacity to obsess seems to unite top performers in music
and other fields.
Ms.  Zahn remembers spending up to four hours a day 'holed up in
cramped practice rooms trying to master a phrase' on her cello.
Mr.  Todd, now 41, recounted in detail the solo audition at age
17 when he got the second-highest mark rather than the highest
mark -- though he still was principal horn in Florida's All-State
Orchestra.
I've always believed the reason I've gotten ahead is by
outworking other people,' he says.  It's a skill learned by
'playing that solo one more time, working on that one little
section one more time,' and it translates into 'working on
something over and over again, or double-checking or
triple-checking.  He adds, 'There's nothing like music to teach
you that eventually if you work hard enough, it does get better.
You see the results.
That's an observation worth remembering at a time when music as a
serious pursuit -- and music education -- is in decline in this
country.
Consider the qualities these high achievers say music has
sharpened: collaboration, creativity, discipline and the capacity
to reconcile conflicting ideas.  All are qualities notably absent
from public life.  Music may not make you a genius, or rich, or
even a better person.  But it helps train you to think
differently, to process different points of view -- and most
important, to take pleasure in listening..  DRAWING (
JD Townsend LCSW
Helping the light dependent to see.
Daytona Beach, Earth, Sol System


JD