Healing Music Enterprises Blog

A week ago, the world lost a bright spirit and a pioneer in the field of sound healing and music medicine.  Don was the author of many books, but the best-known book was probably “The Mozart Effect.”  The book introduced millions of people to the concepts of using music, sound and vibration for healing and wellness.  Don had a gift for turning a phrase and explaining complicated concepts in a way that all could understand.  Studying tone and chanting with Don and then working with him as a mentor in his Institute for Music, Health and Education was absolutely life-changing for me!  When we had a our summer “intensives” in Boulder, people came from all over the world and we all learned from each other as well as from Don.

I could write pages and pages about the trips we all took together, up into the Rockies for toning and chanting, as well as to the mountain retreat of Jonathan Goldman to learn from him as well.  Don and I were both studying with Dr. Alfred Tomatis in Phoenix at the same time and together we learned all about the “Electronic Ear,” that Dr. Tomatis created and Don got one to help with the diagnostic process.

Don and I share many experiences and connected on so many different levels.  He studied in France with Nadia Boulanger, famed teacher of so many American composers such as Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein.  He wrote a biography of her in the mid-nineties.  I conducted research on Wanda Landowska in the late 80’s and wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on her life in reviving the harpsichord in 1990.  Don and I loved to talk about Wanda and Nadia and the fact that they both taught and performed in Paris at the turn of the century, but there is no evidence that they were friends or had anything to do with one another!

Don and I were both Methodists, he from Texas and I from South Carolina.  We were both steeped in Methodist hymns and liturgy and yet both of us drifted into a more metaphysical and Universal perspective.  Still, those Methodist hymns stay in your head, your heart and your soul.  I felt as though Don was a brother because he was so down-to-earth and easy to talk to and be with.

Don was a wonderful friend to me and when I began to work with music and surgery, he was kind enough to mention this in “The Mozart Effect” and I’m sure that this mention has been instrumental in helping me to get the word out to lots of people!  Don will be greatly missed but he leaves a huge body of work in the form of books, CD’s, tapes, and videos.  I hope his work will live on for hundreds of years!