Dr. Cash with Flautist, Carol Cutler

Yes indeed, music is good for your health!

In fact, Music Therapy is a recognized form of treatment for a variety of disorders and conditions.

The American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) states that “Music therapy is an established health-care profession that uses music to address physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs of individuals of all ages.”

I am sure that you will agree that playing music or listening to your favourite tunes makes us feel good.

So now, wearing my medical hat, I want to look at the scientific evidence that confirms what we all think and feel. Here are some proven benefits of music:

1. Stress relief.

People listening to music are calmer, and their levels of stress hormones are reduced. These stress hormones contribute greatly in the long run to heart disease, diabetes and other conditions. So less stress hormones is a good thing.

2. People who listen to music have been shown to actually learn better.

3. Muscle relaxation is another benefit achieved by listening to music. This is especially important with people who have tension headaches, back or neck pain.

4. Better sleep: Studies have suggested that listening to music before going to bed may help with insomnia

5. Music promotes good exercise habits.

Listening to music during a workout, makes the time fly by, allowing one to continue working out and not be bored.

6. Music is used in general hospitals to alleviate pain in conjunction with anesthesia or pain medication.

7. According to the AMTA, music is used with elderly persons to increase or maintain their level of physical, mental, and social/emotional functioning. The sensory and intellectual stimulation of music can help maintain a person’s quality of life.

The notion of the positive effect of music on health and wellbeing is actually quite old.

In fact, it goes back to the ancient times of Aristotle and Plato. In the U.S.A., after the world wars, local musicians visited hospitals and played for veterans suffering both physical and emotional trauma. The veterans’ positive physical and emotional responses to music led the hospital to actually hire musicians.

It soon became apparent that these “hospital musicians” needed some training before entering an institution or hospital. This resulted in the first music therapy degree program in the world at Michigan State University in 1944. So this is how music turned into therapy.

However, music is not just for treatment because as you can see from the above, we can all use a little music in our lives.

As we enter a new year, a resolution to listen to or play more music is a healthy one.

I wish you and yours a happy, health and musical New Year!

Dr. Paul Roumeliotis, MD, CM, MPH, FRCP(C)

Medical Officer of Health and Chief Executive Officer,

Eastern Ontario Health Unit

The Louisville Orchestra: A Rebuttal  (from the blog of Vivian Ruth Sawyer)

      One really doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry in response to   Chuck Maisch’s column about the Louisville Orchestra in the Courier- Journal on September 18, 2011. 

Maisch states correctly that the Louisville Orchestra has been on unstable financial footing seven times since 1984.  Where he is incorrect is that “Save the Orchestra” campaigns were launched in every instance: in fact, as long as my family has been deeply involved (since 2000, when I joined the board of directors and later the executive committee for two three-year terms, and 2006, when my husband joined the board and later became the chairman of the L.O. for two years), there has been no “Save the Orchestra” public campaign, despite many individuals, including all the musicians, imploring management to release publicly a statement quantifying the amount of the fiscal shortfall so that the community might have an opportunity to step forward and meet the gap.

Isn’t it hard to believe that only two years ago, in fiscal year 2009, the Louisville Orchestra had an operating surplus of $91,000?  In a year when the economy was no healthier than ours is today? In fiscal year 2010, the budget shortfall was less than 10% of the total budget of nearly $7 million.  At that time, both the Fund for the Arts CEO and the current L.O. executive director were not overly concerned about the deficit.  Of course, to deal with it appropriately would have required that the incoming L.O. president and the executive director lead the board and all the musicians in a no-holds-barred, vigorous public effort to close the gap.  Instead, all evidence indicates that they began immediately making plans to file for bankruptcy, and now we are looking at the consequence.  It only takes about six months of negligence and ill will on the part of one or two leaders to destroy something that took 75 years for a city to build. 

If one surveyed all the major symphony orchestras in the U.S., one would find many years when their budgets did not balance, and creative solutions needed to be found. The process is rarely pretty, and often involves a harum-scarum, rag-tag variety of skin-of-the-teeth, seat-of-the-pants stopgap measures: welcome to the world of arts management. The result in most cases where such measures were undertaken: the orchestras, like the Louisville Orchestra up to this year, stayed in business.  What’s more remarkable in the case of our gem of an ensemble is that even in spite of numerous close financial calls, the L.O. continued to improve its artistic product. 

So what’s wrong with the concept that a smaller orchestra is the answer for us? Plenty. The entire premise is based on a lack of understanding of symphonic music, its market niches, and what most people want to hear when they use their scarce leisure dollars to come to the orchestra.  An orchestra of fifty seats or less can essentially perform only music written before 1800 – yes, Mozart, yes, Haydn, yes, Bach, but music with a mannered, more chamber-type sound that is generally loved by a rather effete demographic.  It’s also very, very difficult to play well, as any orchestra musician will tell you.  The extreme tonality and cadence of the music reveals every flaw, and even a novice can identify when it’s played sloppily.  The Louisville Orchestra we had until the end of May 2011 was absolutely capable of performing this music beautifully, but a solid diet of it simply isn’t satisfying to most symphony music lovers. We enjoy the occasional selection, dropped into a program somewhat like a palate cleanser, a scoop of grapefruit sorbet between the foie gras of Schumann and the New York strip of Beethoven – both of which would require at least another 20 musicians to perform their important works. In fact, it’s the Schumann, Brahms and the Beethoven that people really come to hear.  They enjoy the smaller works, but that’s not why they buy tickets, and if that and more sparse modern works comprised the entire program, most people would rather go see a movie, or stay home and put their custom-designed Pandora stations on the iHome.  I would. 

“Oh,” current management says, “but we can hire the additional musicians individually required to perform Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann and Mendelssohn, and thus play what people really want to hear.” Let’s say we do that for every concert – because those are the concerts that will sell tickets.  The analysis has been done by consultants with deep knowledge and experience of orchestras and their challenges, and the reports are sitting on the shelves of the L.O. offices: to hire enough individual musicians to rehearse and perform the romantic and impressionist works that are the hallmark of great symphony orchestras very quickly shoots the operational budget right back to the level where it was – the level that Maisch claims we are unable to raise.

Maisch is probably correct that hiring 50 musicians for 30 weeks would require $5-plus million per year: roughly one-and-a-half million dollars less than the budget of the L.O. last year.  Would that be an easier amount to raise, and would it result in a more manageable orchestra for Louisville?  Not unless the L.O. management and every member of the board showed a real appetite for working very, very hard, asking everyone imaginable to contribute.  Has the current leadership demonstrated that chutzpah?  If so, why did they not call my acquaintances or me and ask us to contribute more than usual during this current budget shortfall?  They will say that they met with key givers: yes, they always are eager to meet with the small group of philanthropists who have been beyond generous to the L.O. for the past four decades.  But any nonprofit development professional knows that a budget is not  met by just a few people with deep pockets – and the few angels the L.O. has had are rightfully tired of being the fall-back givers when so few others are solicited. 

Ask yourself: was anyone reading this called or written and asked to make an additional charitable gift to the Louisville Orchestra in the last nine months?  Did anyone meet with you about it?  In a very few cases, there were calls and meetings: incredibly, the L.O. still has a handful of admirable, stalwart people on its board whose only desire is to work their hardest and talk to everyone they know to meet the budget and contractual obligations.  They have continued to do so, some for two decades or more, but they are salmon swimming against a mighty current of naysayers.  Most of the board of directors takes the message of the president and executive director as gospel: the message that it can’t be done, it’s impossible, it’s too big for Louisville, and we need to pull the plug and start over.  If the top two leaders are sending that message, who would be fool enough to give? 

What about publicity? Among the numerous stories in the newspaper about the Louisville Orchestra’s budget woes, where were the stories that announced specifically how much money was needed, when it was early enough in the season last year for the news to generate giving, which would have enabled the L.O. to end fiscal year 2011 in the black? Was there a public appeal for funds to enable the L.O. to keep running?  Were we told exactly how much money was needed and encouraged to pull out all the stops and try to raise it?  Was there, in fact, a “Save the Orchestra” campaign at all last year? No.  The old saw with L.O. management is that the community is tired of hearing the sad tale.  To the contrary, the community is tired of hearing from L.O. management that the goal is too lofty and can’t be reached, while never even revealing what the magic number is that would meet the goal.

And maybe it is too lofty.  The truth is that we don’t really know: because unless the L.O. management is willing to operate in the full light of full disclosure and invite all our citizens to open their wallets and piggy banks and meet the gap any given year of operation, we have no idea if a 71-seat, $6.5 million-per-year orchestra is too large for Louisville.  If it is too hefty for our pocketbooks, if we actually were to get the word out and do a broad-based campaign that would let the community choose whether we keep an orchestra of a size to permit the performance of the greatest symphonic works and if the community’s answer were, “No, it’s a dinosaur, we don’t care enough about it,” then we should accept the verdict and move on.  Then let Maisch and whatever executive director he would like to hire try to raise $5.3 million to put together a group of chamber players – a group most likely comprised of non-union musicians since he does not seem interested in adhering to union guidelines. Let’s see how he does.  I would wish him all the best, but I don’t know many people who would assist, because such a small group won’t be able to play the music we most want to hear, the price tag even for a small group would be steep, and who would give to an effort led by people who have shown that they’re likely to lose interest midstream and pull the plug?

Maisch was correct in one other regard: he stated that in every other year of crisis, the magnificent orchestral music our performing artists provide this community was preserved.  In that context, it’s especially heartbreaking that current management had a different goal, so that about twenty of last year’s musicians have relocated to other cities, and now, at least through November, the Louisville Orchestra is silent.  Its return is contingent on the current management, especially the president and executive director, stepping down for good, and the musicians helping to craft a unique management model where they share ownership and have a voice and vote in their destiny for the good of the community.  That is the only hope for the future of the Louisville Orchestra. In the meantime, what a sad legacy the current leadership has left the city of Louisville.

The motley program the YouTube Symphony Orchestra will play at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday evening was devised partly to ensure every section a place or two in the sun. So after full-orchestral rehearsals at the Juilliard School on Monday — led by Michael Tilson Thomas, its artistic adviser and conductor, and Tan Dun, who composed a piece for the occasion — the orchestra split up starting at mid-afternoon for smaller sessions.

Stephen Paulson, a mentor, took a dozen players — mostly winds, a cellist and a bassist — next door to the Kaplan Penthouse to rehearse Dvorak’s wonderful Serenade for Winds, or part of it: a conflation of the first movement and the finale.

If the players thought they were doing well to get away from the painstakingly — make that painfully — detailed work Mr. Thomas had just been subjecting them to in a patch of the scherzo from Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, they may have had second thoughts. As principal bassoonist of the San Francisco Symphony, Mr. Paulson plays regularly under Mr. Thomas’s direction, and he evidently shares his work ethic.

Playing first bassoon here, Mr. Paulson led the mostly young players haltingly through the piece, shaping lines and sharpening rhythms everywhere and tending to the piece’s overall contour. Some laggard attacks suggested that a certain weariness might be setting in. (“I seem to be always the first person playing the second beat,” Mr. Paulson said. “See if you can play it right with me.”) If the players weren’t tired then, they probably were by the time the session ended, 10 minutes late.

And there was more for everyone to do on Monday evening. Seven youngish musicians — mostly percussionists, a guitarist and an okarina player — gathered in Juilliard’s Willson Theater to rehearse Lou Harrison’s “Canticle No. 3,” with Edwin Outwater, a Thomas protégé, conducting.

Or rather, increasingly, not conducting. First he had to win the confidence of the players. “If I don’t give you a cue, it’s better to hold up,” he told an overeager percussionist. “I usually don’t miss.” (On the other hand, you can appreciate the nervousness of a young player clanging on brake drums with metal hammers; it’s hard to paper over a false entry.)

But as the piece went on, with its extended stretches of tricky rhythms, Mr. Outwater found that things fell into place more quickly when he conducted minimally and had the players listen more closely to one another. “If I feel you guys are together,” he said, “I’m not going to interfere.” In the end he was offering little more than those all-important cues.

Many conductors entreat orchestra players to emulate chamber musicians, and listen to one another. Mr. Outwater put the matter into a formula, asking the players to listen 80 percent and watch 20 percent. “No conductor wants you to watch 80 percent,” he added.

Ted Atkatz — a former principal percussionist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who popped in and out as mentor — concurred with Mr. Outwater. “We’re trying to get where we can just sit in the audience,” he said.

Well, he can, at least.

This is a deep question that many people ask themselves very sincerely and with a burning desire to know that answer. I’ve certainly asked myself this question many times and am finally beginning to understand some of the keys to the mystery.

One of the main factors is your past association with that music. Is it possible to be profoundly affected by something you’ve never even heard before though? Yes, I believe that it is. Music that is especially emotional or rousing can be very effective, even if you’ve never heard it before. But then, music that is beautifully peaceful or ethereal can also be quite effective the first time around. So there you go…!

The way that music affects people is very individual. We do know that hearing music that one likes causes certain brain chemicals or neurohormones to be released. If you hear something that you absolutely love and that has wonderful associations with the past, that’s the best of all worlds! Here is a piece that does that for me! I played this piece with a dear friend in the past and just hearing it makes me feel so happy and peaceful. Hope you enjoy it too!

How does musical taste develop?  I’m sure that volumes and volumes have been written on this subject and I’d love to read them, but for now I will just expound on my own theory. 

We know that different cultures around the globe (and probably around the universe!) have evolved different types of music and different instruments, dances, and art forms of different kinds.  It probably is safe to say that most people tend to like or appreciate the type of music that they heard growing up. 

In my case, I grew up in the 50′s and 60′s in South Carolina, hearing the popular music of that day (Perry Como, Doris Day, Elvis, the Beatles, etc.) and I also heard a lot of church music in the United Methodist Church.  I still love all of that music.  But when I was 13/14 I was introduced in a big way to classical music.  For the first time, I got a wonderful piano teacher who not only taught me the classics but also encouraged me to go to hear our local symphony orchestra (the Greenville Symphony) and Opera.  I will never forget seeing my first opera ( Gounod’s “Faust”) for the first time at Furman University and just loving it!! 

Starting around age 15, I would get up an hour earlier than the rest of the family and either practice the piano (my siblings did not appreciate that!) or play the classical records that I checked out of the library or got as presents.  Even though most of the people in my famiy did not love classical music ( they liked it, but were more into sports) I was in love with classical music from the beginning.

About 20 years ago, I make a conscious effort to begin broadening my horizons and listening to every type of music I could get my hands on!  I listened to hip-hop, rap, reggae and all kinds of music that was new to me.  Since I’m in the music healing/music medicine field, I believe that I can help more people if I know and appreciate more types of music.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.  What type of music did you grow up with and what do you listen to now?

This past Wednesday night I attended a fantastic two-piano concert at the U of L School of Music.  My former piano professor, Lee Luvisi, gave a two-piano recital with Dr. Dror Biran.  The performance was quite stunning.  The opening piece was most in line with Luvisi’s comfort zone, the Mozart Sonata in D Major for Two Pianos, K. 448.  Both men absolutely sparkled with their alternating scales and passages up and down the keyboard and were absolutely perfectly matched and compatible musically, although physically they were so different in appearance and manner.  Luvisi probably is 40 years older and has a full head of silver hair and maybe 6 inches taller.  Biran is short with a shaved head and bounces all over while playing while Luvisi stays closer to the piano while playing. 

The second work performed was Ravel’s own arrangement of “La Valse” for two pianos and was a brilliant display of keyboard pyrotechnics by both men.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Luvisi doing glissandi up and down the keyboard, but both men were giving this piece everything that had and again, they seemed very well matched.

The final work was Brahms own arrangement of his f minor piano quintet for two pianos.  All four movements were played with utmost beauty and technical perfection. 

The entire evening was filled with superb musicality and athletic technical prowess.  Sure wish more people had been there to enjoy it!  I’ll never forget it!

Being a child of the 50′s, I had always associated the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice with Fantasia, Disney, and Mickey Mouse.  I didn’t realize until recently that I had never actually heard a live performance of this exciting piece, sans Mickey Mouse!

The Louisville Orchestra did a superb job on the piece tonight and I saw and heard that it is really not an easy piece to play, technically or ensemble-wise.  Lots of tricky entrances, silences, and complicated passages for all the instruments. 

If you have a chance to hear it live, don’t miss it!  Meanwhile, here’s an interesting performance!

While teaching my “Intro to Healing Music” class the other day, the topic of the ostinato came up.   We were talking about the importance of people feeling “grounded” in order for healing to take place. 

When people feel like they are connected to something stable and solid, then they can relax enough to let go of stress and tension and their bodies can begin to repair themselves.

The human body is a miraculous creation you know.  If we break a bone or cut ourselves, or get a cold, we really don’t have to go to a doctor.  With time we will heal.  it’s just that we might heal faster or straighter (in the case of a bone) or without infection (in the case of a cut) if we go to a doctor and take a “medicine.”  But a big part of healing, I believe, is just relaxing and grounding the body enough so that natural healing processes can begin.

Listen to this brief example of an ostinato in the Pachelbel Canon:

What exactly is an ostinato?  The website www.creativemusicworks.com defines it as “a repeated sound or sound pattern. It can be verbal, rhythmic, textural, or tonal in nature. It can be used to further a set harmonic or rhythmic structure, in the way a bass pattern or a dance rhythm would be used in early music or contemporary jazz. In its simplest use, it can avoid a set harmonic structure and continue on much like a drone or pedal point, for as long as the improviser chooses. If one accepts all experiments, listening with an “open ear,” one can develop a unique musical vocabulary by exploring with melody over a simple ostinato.”

Whether you choosing a piece of music for its healing properties or composing your own  healing music, think about the grounding power of the ostinato.  The predictability factor is always a plus.  When listening to the Pachelbel Canon, you know that the bass line will always be the same throughout.  This allows the listener to relax, lean back and enjoy the flow of the beautiful melodies above. 

Many music professionals, it seems, do not care for the Pachelbel Canon because they believe that it has been so over-played and over-used.  For most of us, though, it is still a beautiful, healing piece of music.