Vol 6(1), March 1, 2006
mi40006000203

"Take It From the Top, Les"

By Robin Rio |Author bio & contact info|

Musical performance can be a life-long creative practice that helps to nurture and support the life of a music therapist. This story offers a personal perspective of the meaning of shared music experiences outside the clinical setting, and focuses on the value of continuing performance of one's "own music," that which is personally relevant, through different phases of life.

"Take it from the top, Les" is an inside family joke from the 1970's. Les was our family friend, madrigal group leader, piano teacher, and church organist/choir director. It was Christmas eve, mid-service, sometime after midnight. The soloist, who reminded me a little of a slightly tipsy Johnny Mathis, was out in front of the congregation singing a spiritual, and had forgotten his lyric. This colorful lounge-style vocalist saying, "Take it from the top" in the middle of the most attended and "high holy" mass of the year sent the choir into shielded tittering, giggles, gasps and rolled eyeballs. I was probably twelve at the time.

Growing up, I learned to read music at about the same time I learned to read words. With me included, my family had an even spread of five voices that could sing a cappella music in parts. It never occurred to me that other children didn't sit around with their parents' friends every few weeks, eating dessert and singing madrigals, and I enjoyed performing for local audiences in churches and libraries. I sang solos in church and never felt particularly scared or shy; music was a thing that was rehearsed and then shared with others.

In the summers, we sang rounds and folksongs by bonfire, sometimes with guitar and ukulele, or Dad's mandolin. We spent the summer where my Mom was raised, on the rural shores of Nova Scotia, and would entertain ourselves with friends by making up plays, going on hikes, swimming, and learning every word, harmony, and air-guitar lick of pop music classics from groups like the Eagles and Elton John. We nearly drove our parents insane one year singing every verse of, "American Pie" repeatedly while making the twenty hour trip from LI, NY to Eastern Canada. Who knew that these formative years were preparing me for life as a music therapist?

The point I'd like to make here is more than just the value of early learning experiences of sight singing, piano lessons, and social connectedness through group music making. I was having so much fun, and finding so much personal fulfillment through my own shared creativity and the aesthetic beauty of the music, that I wanted to share it with others. Performing music (and I use this term very loosely, to include all the informal shared experiences) was part of my identity. When I went through awkward, unsettling and emotional teenage years I still enjoyed playing "my music" for others, with friends or solo, accompanying myself on piano or guitar. It was a constant, and the external experience of sharing it with others has been and remains as important a process as the internal experience of writing or choosing and repeating the song to master it fully and give it expression.

The value of playing my "own" music for others continues as I enter the twenty year mark of my career in music therapy. I met my husband, director of the early music singing group, "Cappella Sonora" when I was new in town and looking for a group to sing with. Together, we have performed Jazz in night clubs, Hawaiian music for a tropical event, Italian classics for a local restaurant, and made extensive contributions on two CD's of Medieval and Renaissance music. This musical outlet gives me an energy and fulfillment similar to the type of reward I get from clinical music therapy. Only, it's me and an audience or a congregation instead of with clients in a therapy setting. Both meaningful, just different. I believe that all creative experiences feed each other, and that my active performance life enriches my teaching and therapy work.

My musical mentor and dear family friend, Les, died of AIDs in the 1980's. I will remember him always. My husband and I will be singing at the Christmas Eve service this week. "Take it from the top, Les."