Music Therapy | Expert Endorsements
Remo Belli
Founder and CEO, Remo Inc.
"It's time to stop thinking of the drum as just a musical instrument. Start thinking of it as a unifying tool for every family, a wellness tool for every retiree, and an educational tool for every classroom. At Remo, we'd like to help people of all ages and abilities include drumming, one of the oldest forms of music making, in their personal prescription for wellness."
Kenneth E. Bruscia, PhD, MT–BC
Faculty Member, Boyer College of Music and Dance, Temple University
Past President of the American Association for Music Therapy (AAMT)
"Music therapy is a systematic process of intervention wherein the therapist helps the client to promote health, using music experiences and the relationships that develop through them as dynamic forces of change."
Alicia Ann Clair, PhD, MT–BC
Professor and Director of Music Education and Music Therapy, University of Kansas
Research Associate in Gerontology, University of Kansas
"Music therapy is effective in achieving the best functional outcomes for individuals to improve life quality. Music therapy interventions are designed by skilled practitioners who have appropriate professional training and credentials, Music Therapist-Board Certified (MT–BC). Music therapists work within a scope of practice to provide individualized opportunities for persons in their care to live life to the fullest."
Barbara Crowe, MMT, MT–BC
Director of Music Therapy at Arizona State University
Past President of the National Association for Music Therapy (NAMT)
"(Music therapy) can make the difference between withdrawal and awareness, between isolation and interaction, between chronic pain and comfort—between demoralization and dignity.”
Mickey Hart
Drummer for Grateful Dead rock band
"(Rhythm) is there in the cycles of the seasons, in the migrations of the birds and animals, in the fruiting and withering of plants, and in the birth, maturation and death of ourselves," Hart told a Senate panel studying music therapy.
Mathew H.M. Lee, MD
Clinical Professor / Professor Emeritus of Rehabilitation Medicine
Langone Medical Center, New York University
"Music therapy has been an invaluable tool with many of our rehabilitation patients. There is no question that the relationship of music and medicine will blossom because of the advent of previously unavailable techniques that can now show the effect of music."
Maureen McGovern
Singer, Actor
American Music Therapy Association National Spokesperson
Music affects people on an emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and cellular level. It unlocks the secrets of the soul and gently guides the body to restore and to become a vessel of hope and healing. One’s quality of life is immediately enhanced through music. Using individually crafted, clinically designed one-on-one music therapy sessions, a music therapist becomes a care giver and the catalyst between illness and wellness in patients. I have witnessed amazing and inspiring progress with patients while going on rounds with music therapists throughout the country.
Dr. Clive Robbins
Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy Clinic
"Almost all children respond to music. Music is an open-sesame, and if you can use it carefully and appropriately, you can reach into that child's potential for development."
Oliver Sacks, MD
Professor of Neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York
Author of Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
Dr. Sacks reports that patients with neurological disorders who cannot talk or move are often able to sing, and sometimes even dance, to music. Music therapy also can help ease the trauma of grieving, lessen depression and provide an outlet for people who are otherwise withdrawn.
"Music can move us to the heights and depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does—humans are a musical species."
"I regard music therapy as a tool of great power in many neurological disorders—Parkinson's and Alzheimer's—because of its unique capacity to organize or reorganize cerebral function when it has been damaged."
Robin Spielberg
Pianist, Composer, Recording Artist
American Music Therapy Association National Spokesperson
“As a national artist spokesperson for AMTA, I have had the good fortune to watch music therapists at work in a variety of settings. The undeniable link between music and wellness is as obvious in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) as it is in nursing homes. Music not only humanizes modern medicine, it enables it to function at its highest potential.”