Special Section: In Memory of Clive Robbins 1927-2011

So far-so close: Remembering Clive Robbins

By Simon Gilbertson

As the contributors to this special issue of Voices give testimony to, Clive Robbins has influenced many lives in many different ways. As a friend, colleague, teacher, supervisor, author, therapist, visionary, companion and international force of change, Clive has continuously lived a life which has gone so far, in terms of geography and development of music therapy, whilst always remaining so very close to the human predicament and the essence of relationships with and within music.

It was in the early 1980s that I watched with teenage amazement as Sybil Beresford-Peirse showed early reel-to-reel footage of music therapy sessions with Paul Nordoff and Clive at an open day at the first Nordoff-Robbins centre in Kentish Town as I was 15 years old. After training as a music therapist in 1992 at the Nordoff-Robbins Centre in London, Clive Robbins has been someone I have spent time with, someone whose writing I have read, and someone others have told me about. Over the past twenty years, although living geographically far from another, he took the few opportunities we had to spend time together to listen so very closely to the music-centre of therapy. Every time, the way that I felt changed and once again the music quickened and lived from within the relationships that created it.

But the uniqueness of my experience lies in the fact that it is not singular. Much more significantly, Clive shared this caring for people and the infinite details of relationships with everyone that he met all over the globe. As so clear in this special issue, through inspiring others to do the same, and also to find their own expressions of caring, Clive created a legacy of caring by going so far and staying so close.