I’m writing this while visiting my grandmother for the first time since becoming a music therapist, so naturally the only luggage I flew with was my guitar. She lives in the same Vermont town where she taught kindergarten and piano lessons in the 1970’s, though she recently moved for the first time in nearly 60 years, down the street to an assisted living community. Her health has declined rapidly in the last couple months—the woman who used to be the most popular person in t

These thoughts are inspired by Kayla Shafer’s post from July, in which she argued that what determines the success of a music therapy session is less about the therapist’s choices than one might expect–that in fact, an important element is the client’s belief in music as a therapeutic medium. This idea had not occurred to me, but immediately felt true, and I’ve been thinking ever since about the nature of that belief: what does it mean to believe in the music, and what can t

Every Monday evening during the fall semester, you will find me teaching Psychology of Music at the University of Minnesota to music...