Photo by Lindsey Wilson
Date: April 26, 2017
Venue: WeWork Bryant Park (NY)
Music is Medicine for the Soul
Review by Lindsey Wilson
Andrew Schulman is the Medical Musician that heals the Body and Soul. These two worlds, music and medicine, beautifully collide as MFM members listened to professional guitarist Andrew Schulman share a moving story about how music literally saved his Life from his best-selling book Waking The Spirit.
The audience was captivated by Schulman’s amazing adventure as he took us on a musically surreal experience providing us with snapshots of his near death experience, his lucid coma dreams and the music that brought him through it all which were compositions ranging from Bach to The Beatles. It is during this journey that Schulman was able to discover his Life’s work not only as a professional musician, but as a healer. Hence, the term “medical musician”. In the discussion, I was riveted, but not surprised, by the impact music had on the healthcare system and the many jobs the medical industry could possibly offer a professional musician.
However, this newly realized profession is not for your average or even slightly above average musician. Schulman explained this rather candidly during the workshop, stating that a musician who works in the medical field should be highly trained in their instrument and open to learning a plethora of medical terms and conditions that affect the patients to whom they play for. The awareness and sensitivity one embraces in order to be a medical musician graciously goes far beyond what is expected and adds an almost sacred validity to its newly found existence.
Andrew Schulman’s story, soon to be a film, is truly thoughtful, inspiring and informative. It brings us full circle to the vast importance of a musician’s Life. Waking the Spirit offers us the undeniable evidence that a medical musician is a true healer offering yet another form of alternative healing that will brilliantly serve humanity giving true meaning to why Music is a Profession.
Visit Amazon.com to purchase Waking the Spirit: https://us.macmillan.com/wakingthespirit/andrewschulman/9781250055774 right now!