As May is Mental Health Awareness month, I thought I would just sit down and write a few words touching on the considerable benefits of music study on the mind and spirit of students.
Only this month, one of my students was telling me about her day and shared that on a particular day when she had been at home with a stressful headache, she chose to sit down at her piano and play one of her newest assigned piano pieces at the piano. She shared with me that, after playing her piece for a while, her headache vanished! It's so great when this happens. As a side note, she is learning to play a flowing water-themed piece by composer, Wendy Stevens.
There is something about the harmony of musical notes played that almost causes us to suspend our usual patterns of thought for a moment just to enjoy the sound and sense of music.
I can't help but be taken back to one of my own experiences as a volunteer musician for Musicians on Call in New York City years back when I used to be taken from room to room with a keyboard on a rolling cart, playing music for patients at hospitals. In one instance, a patient looked up at me after my playing for her and said to me, “For one moment, I forgot about the pain," and I could not have been rewarded with a more gratifying response that made it all more than worth it.