Title: What Happens When Music Happens with Paul Lauzon MMT MTA

 

Drawing upon lived experience, I have written this suite of poems to evoke epiphanies of music in her many phenomenal dimensions.

 

My presentation will include a reading of some of the poems. As well, I will indicate ways in which this poetic/theoretical work is pertinent to clinical practice in music therapy. There will be time for comments and questions.

 

Biography: Paul Lauzon is a poet, songwriter, and music therapist. For decades, his work has focused on exploring the many interconnections of sound and sense, of music and words. As a singer/songwriter, he has toured widely and released several recordings of original songs. As a clinical music therapist, he has worked with individuals in stages of life from pre-natal to palliative care. His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in several international music therapy journals. He is founding professor of the Music Therapy Program at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

 

Chapel Street Editions has recently released his book, When Music Happens.

 

One reviewer explains:

 

In When Music Happens, Paul Lauzon offers us an extraordinary personal, philosophical, and scholarly experience of the poetry of music — to which he gives the name, melopoetics.

 

Rooted in his extensive life experience as a music therapist, musician/performer, poet, and educator, Lauzon, in Part One, weaves images of music throughout his title poem, “When Music Happens.” In the reference section to the poem, Lauzon shares extensive notes on key phrases in the poem, embellishing them with a vast and truly impressive extended background of information. In Part Two, Lauzon consolidates his work with the concise but comprehensive essay, “Anatomy of a Musical Being: A Music Systems Theory of Music Therapy.”

 

When Music Happens is a must read for musicians, music therapists, neuroscientists, and anyone who wishes to be inspired, educated, transformed by the full mind/body/spirit experience of Paul Lauzon’s gift of poetry and scholarship.

 

~ Elizabeth Moffitt MTA MA Faculty Emeritus of Music Therapy, Capilano University