Music Therapy Clinician: Supporting reflective clinical practice Volume 1 | Page 33

Angela: And I have to mention

too, it’s nothing that’s watered
down. It’s true live, good music.
Um, as I mentioned, the one group
came together at a coffeehouse
and then formed a group. The one
we did in the King of Prussia,
Pennsylvania area…this is our
second year we’ve done it in
December, and we partnered with
the Valley Forge Chorale. So they
have their annual Christmas
concert, and we partnered with
them, so one week after their
concert they did another one,
sensory friendly one, for us. But
they also…some of the members
brought their families…and it was a
nice way, because they’ve been
practicing a long time for this
concert, so it was another
performance outlet for them, and
they were supporting our mission
as well. So sometimes there’re
performers that we work with, and
sometimes there are organizations
that we partner with.

Roia:

That is…that is really
starting to take off in so many
areas, and I know, when you and I
were talking about it, um, I had said
I noticed it in a couple of different
ways. Um, I guess there was a
planetarium kind of a thing
happening at Raritan Valley
Community College where they
decided to a sensory friendly
version of things, and movie
theaters have been trying to be
more mindful of not putting things
up at ten thousand decibels - which
I personally appreciate! Um,
I…what I wanted to get back to, if
you don’t mind, because we had
started but we got diverted, talking
about the fact that, I think,
Christine, for you particularly that
this seemed to be kind of entwined
in your music therapy process for
some of your clients. Was I
understanding that properly?

Christine: Yes! Absolutely! It
came out of people really having
wonderful experiences using their
voice…singing in sessions.

Roia: Cool!
Christine:

And
wanting to just, sort of, give
them an opportunity to
develop some other peer
social relationships using
that singing.

Roia:

Edy Toussaint performing
at the Common Grounds
Coffeehouse
31 | P a g e

You
know…I
think…I think that’s really
groovy, because as you
were talking about that - I’m
such a ninety year old
[laughter] - um, it’s just
something, and again, that
was how our coffeehouse
kind of grew…out of the fact
that there were lots of us
who really liked to just get
together to hang out and
make music together. And I
think, similar to the Sensory
Friendly Concerts, we tried
to…I think we had…yeah,
we
definitely
had

amplification, but it wasn’t loud
amplification, and there was always
space for people to move if they
needed to step out of the room. We
found that, um, most of our
audience were folks from the
developmental center who were
able, kind of, more to keep it
together. It was a little bit harder to
convince the staff from the cottages
- our place is made up of a bunch
of different cottages, and people
have lived there for a long time and people from the cottages
where folks needed a lot more
support were a little bit less likely to
come. It happened once in a while,
but it was a little bit less, less likely.
And we also tried hard to have…A
few of the folks who live at the
developmental
center
were
performers. We had folks come to
perform from Matheny, actually,
and I was hoping to have one of the
Matheny folks here to converse
with us about that, but we did not
have time to get everybody all
connected for - and it was hard
enough connecting the three of us
[laughter] for this conversation but we tried to have folks who were
songwriters or musicians who also
had
disabilities
as
featured
performers, because I thought it
would be important to have folks
with disabilities as models, um,
rather than always having to see
neurotypical or non-disabled people
in positions of…I don’t want to say
musical power…but, as the star
performer. It was important,
anyway to me, to make sure that
the folks who lived at the
developmental
center
had
opportunities to have people who
were similar to themselves out
there being creative and presenting
their music and their perspectives,
so we had folks who shared poetry,
folks who shared songs they had
written, and I think it was
meaningful both for the folks who
were audience members as
well…and also for people who did
come from the public…to see folks
with disabilities as performers. And
other…just our other musicians,
who…because we often had a
number of different musicians