<![CDATA[Before and After the Fall, Music Heals]]>As I sit under a webcam mounted on a 7 foot tripod, I have an uneasy feeling that the cam will dislodge, reviving the nightmare of my head injury, sustained in a backwards fall on June 29th. What made things worse for my noggin was a jagged incline that caused brute force contact with the concrete. I didn’t know what hit me as my limp body was lifted up by paramedics, placed on a stretcher, and shuttled off to the Emergency room. (Thankfully, a C-T scan showed NO intracranial bleeding and I was “conscious” despite the nasty impact.) Still, “concussion” that’s attached to such an injury, is a scary diagnosis with all its possible ramifications and complications, so I’ve been been treading lightly with ice-packed rest periods round the clock.

Prior to the slam, I’d stashed away some lesson footage that I’d intended to embed within two separate blogs, but they remained on hold until today when I decided to post them as a form of self-applied “Music Therapy.” (My framed NYU Master’s Degree in this field of endeavor had been collecting silverfish over decades, so it was the right moment to enlist the spirit of this particular journey that celebrates music’s healing properties.)

The two videos below certainly have a common thread as phrasing, harmonic rhythm, technique, choreography (rotation, arm weight variations, supple wrists, etc), the “singing” pulse, vocal modeling, all belong to an artistically nuanced musical endeavor.

The first lesson extract is with an adult student, followed by the second, with a child of 9 years old who’s been studying piano since mid-February, 2016, with a few interspersed breaks.

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Without doubt, music blessedly soothes during challenging times like these.

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