The Healing Power of Music: Robin Spielberg (Full Transcript)

Because I was able to work in piano rooms, in hotel lobbies, all throughout New York City.

Eventually, I recorded an album of my original piano solos and that really took off. And that launched my career as a recording artist and a touring artist. And here I am performing at my Carnegie Hall debut in 1997.

I love writing the soundtrack to my life. And while I’ve never become a household name or wildly famous, it does give me a certain amount of satisfaction to know that my music has provided the soundtrack to so many other people’s life cycle events.

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My music has accompanied couples down the aisle, has lulled babies to sleep, and has helped families in mourning. And I’ve heard from a number of graduate students studying for the bar exam that my music has kept them company, late into the night.

It wasn’t until September of 1998, in a life changing, very scary and tragic incident that I realized that music had even more power than I had ever realized.

I was pregnant with twin girls. Everything was going very well; the pregnancy. The only thing that went wrong was that the pregnancy was too short. I experienced preterm labor in my 22nd week and I was in the hospital on bed rest for 11 days.

There was an infection in one of the placentas, and so the doctors had to perform an emergency C-section. This infection was threatening everyone’s life. And the doctors did not expect the babies to live. One did not survive, but the other one did. And we named her Valérie from the Latin Valour to be strong.

Before you start feeling too bad for me, Valerie’s here in the audience today. She’s a happy and healthy teenage girl.

Here she is about the size of a Beanie Baby. She was born weighing twelve ounces. And the protocol in the hospital at the time was to only perform lifesaving heroic measures on babies of a certain weight. And she didn’t meet that criteria.

We had a very, very kind nurse in the O.R. She put her thumb on the scale for us. So our daughter could tip that scale at one pound, one ounce. So on her birth certificate, it says 11 inches, 17 ounces, Valérie Spielberg Cosson.

Here’s a little another photograph of her close up. She was too small to be put into an incubator, so she had this station. And here’s my wedding ring that she’s wearing is her bracelet. Valérie was the size of a can of Coca-Cola.

Now, the NICU 15 years ago was not anything I expected it to be. It was filled with wonderful doctors and wonderful staff, but it was also a very loud place. It was hustling and bustling. It had the energy of an emergency room. As I mentioned, it was loud.

It was not the kind of environment that you think of when you think of babies that need to heal; that need to recover. I wanted so badly to give Valérie the gift of music. I wanted to play piano for her the way I did when she was in utero. That’s what calmed and centered and focused me. I knew it would do the same for her.

So I did the next best thing. I asked for permission to bring my C.Ds to Valerie’s station so that we could drown out some of these other ambient noise that were so displeasing. And the nursing staff said, sure, OK,

Well, they noticed something very interesting. When my music was playing by Valérie’s Station, her vital signs improved. In other words, her saturation, her oxygen saturation levels increased, her blood pressure stabilized, and her heart, while still needing lifesaving surgery, was getting a little bit of a better rhythm.

And this was not just a fluke. This didn’t happen over a 24 hour period or a couple of weeks. We were in the NICU for a long four months, and time after time this is what we noticed. And we could see the evidence on the monitors. And it was not just Valerie who was affected. It was all of the babies who were within earshot of the music.

Well, I was perplexed. I understand music preference. I understand that. What I couldn’t understand were how this infant… actually that I really couldn’t call Valerie an infant. Valerie was a fetus growing outside the womb.

How could music have such a positive medical, real physical effect on this fetus?

So I did some research and I went online and I discovered the research of Dr. Jane Stanley. I located her research through the American Music Therapy Association’s Website: musictherapy.org.

Dr. Stanley worked at the University of Tallahassee in Florida, and she has spent decades of her career studying this: the effects of music on the premature infant. Her studies basically concurred with everything that we had been witnessing in the hospital.

Studies came out years after we left the hospital showing that singing or playing womb like sounds to infants help soothe and calm them. And two hundred and seventy two preemies were studied and it was noted that neurological changes took place after music therapy was employed.

Valérie came home, years went by, and we continued to play music, sing music and incorporate music in her daily life, because micro preemies like Valérie are subject to a myriad of learning disabilities, delays and medical conditions.

We thought it was important to continue whatever we were doing with music, as other conditions presented themselves. One thing that presented itself rather early in elementary school was a condition that showed us that Valérie had difficulty with her short term memory.

This became a problem in the second and third grade when teachers started sending home worksheets and asked students to memorize facts. I remember one of her first tests was on the definitions of some very simple health terms. Vaccine, thermometer, germ. She was to define all of these terms and be able to answer them on a test.

However, when I was studying with Valérie and helping her learn and the way I learned, probably many of you have learned, Valérie was unable to repeat back the answers, and she was unable to remember them.

I was getting pretty frustrated. I said, “Valérie, What is a vaccine, we’ve gone over this so many times.”

And she said, “I’m sorry Mommy, I don’t know.”

In my frustration, I just started to do what I do naturally. I turned to music and I said, “Valerie. Vaccine is a shot the doctor gives you, so the germs don’t get sick.”

 (Singing)

“A vaccine is a shot. The doctor gives you so the germs don’t get sick.”

And that was over nine years ago and I still remember it. And you can rest assured that Valerie did do. And she went from a C student to an A student.

I grabbed all of her curricula. I started setting all of her social studies. All of her science. All of her history to music. And I cannot tell you the joy that my husband and I experienced when we went to parent teacher conferences and we saw their faces and they said to us, wow, Valerie went from being such an anxious little girl to so calm and relaxed.

And I said, how could you tell?

I said, well, she takes an exam and she just sings her way right to the test.

We were so excited about that. Valérie started taking percussion lessons as well. Not only did with music lessons her dexterity improved, but her sense of rhythm.

And when you think about it, it makes sense. We have so much rhythm in our daily lives. There’s the rhythm of waking up in the morning and getting prepared for work or for school and packing our backpacks and getting our lunch prepared and incorporating rhythm in a music kind of way just helped reinforce all of the rhythms of Valérie’s day to day activities and helped her a great deal.

When students have music in school, their brain stems are more robust. And when rhythm is introduced, it is true. They do a bit better in school. And their rhythms in their lives are accompanied by the rhythms in the music.

And this is not a brand new idea. As early as post-World War II, nurses noticed that veterans were faster to get up on their feet and get better when big band music was playing.

And no wonder music does not just exercise one part of our brain. It kind of lights up all of our brain. There’s not one area of our brain that we can say, this area is the music area of our brain. The way we could say this is the speech area of our brain. Music lights up all of our brain and it’s really, really good for us.

A few years ago. I was on tour in rural Missouri. And as I often do, I stopped by a nursing home to visit with patients and play piano. I usually love these jobs because these little side gigs, they’re kind of volunteer gigs that I do under the radar.

And they’re fun to do because I love a good Broadway show tune, and I love being able to introduce and reintroduce the music of yesteryear to the elderly. It really brightens their day.

So I had my whole bag of tricks with me. I had a big fake book along with me, had all kinds of ideas. I thought, well, maybe I’ll play name that tune.

But as soon as I walked in and saw the shape, the condition of this particular nursing care facility, which was state-run, the condition of the piano and the residents, I knew this was not going to be my favorite hour.

The residents were kind of slumped over in wheelchairs. Some of them were wheeled in on stretchers. And as I began to play piano, there was no applause after the song.

So I decided, well, I’ll just finish out the hour, I’ll disappear into piano land. And what I’ll do is I’ll just play an hour of tunes and then I’ll leave. And that’s exactly what I did. I felt kind of sad and kind of depressed when I was walking away.

Just as I was about to exit to the parking lot, A nurse came running down the hall. And she said to me, Robin, Robin, wait, wait. I just wanted… I just wanted to thank you. I wanted to thank you so much, because what you did today, it was just amazing; all of the connections you made.

And I said, ‘Really?’

And I wasn’t being sarcastic. I mean, all of the ways that I have measured success up until this point, well, they were just a big fat zero. For me, all I had to measure my success were all the societal standards. Money, applause, how many of these CDs were sold? How many requests were made? Where you chart on the radio, standing ovations, none of those things had just occurred.

And she said, “Well, remember when you’re playing that song Moon River?”

And I said, “Yes, yes, I remember playing Moon River.”

She said, “Well, there was a man who was singing along.”

I said, “Yes, actually kind of recall a baritone voice singing along as I was playing Moon River.”

And she said, “Yes, but what you couldn’t have known is that this man has not spoken in six months. He lost his wife about a year ago and he began to withdraw. He stopped speaking to the staff and then he didn’t want any of his family visiting him. He completely was in his own shell.”

Well, as it turned out, Moon River was his wedding song. And when I played it, it brought him back and he asked for his family to visit with him because he was ready to.

And she said, the reason no one was there to see you out the door is because we all went to call his family to tell them the good news that they can come and visit with him. And tears were pouring down her cheeks.

And as I walked out to my car, I realized that the greatest success, the most successful gig of my lifetime had just occurred, because of this connection.

I have witnessed firsthand the power of music and working alongside music therapists I have seen them work with traumatic brain injury patients, with Alzheimer’s patients, with autism patients, with children with learning disabilities. Of course, music in the neonatal intensive care unit.

I have seen music help with pain management. It has really been profound.

And what has once started as a love for the piano has now grown to a love of all things music. Because music I have seen, as I have seen it can open pathways to healing that I never knew were possible.

This is Valérie playing drums. And here she is playing for Mallet Marimba. She earned her a letter last night in Varsity Band.

So can music save a life? I can’t say for sure. But I can tell you for sure that music can have a life changing effect on your life.

Music is breaking new ground and music therapy is groundbreaking.

I’d like to share with you now a song which is typical of the kind of music that I shared with Valerie while she was in the NICU and beyond. And this is a song entitled Dreaming of Summer. I invite you to dream along as you listen.

[Music]

Thank you. Thank you.

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