Hans Pizka

Thanks to Jonathan West for citing in this post on musicality the following quote from Hans Pizka :

>>If you listen to certain chords, and it starts running down your back icecold, and your flesh begins to creep, that's where musicality starts. If you listen to music, and you feel like flying in outer space, that's where musicality starts. If you listen to music, and you become angry or sad, that's where musicality starts. And if you are able, to bring others into the moods said above by your playing, well, then you are a musical musician.<<

The first step as a music therapist is to engage the client's interest in what you're trying to do. I've often used the phrase "getting traction" with a client, and this quote wonderfully explains how that can happen. For music to have any effect, therapeutic or otherwise, it has to effect some physical and/or emotional response in the listener. 

Good technique can give you more, and more subtle, tools to express your musicality, but perfect technique without musicality will get you nowhere with most clients and audiences. If there are exceptions to this, it might be folks falling somewhere in the spectrum of autism, or that type of pedagogue for whom technique can seemingly become an end in itself.

photo - at John & Kate's