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Episode 50- Opportunities for Musicians to Thrive in the Health Space with Aaron Colverson

On Today’s Episode…

Join me with Guest speaker Aaron Colverson as we talk about opportunities for musicians in health and health-adjacent fields as well as his personal journey from performance major to ethnomusicologist and neuroscience researcher.

I’ve met many musicians with experience in the clinical side of the health space from music therapist Raquel Ravaglioli to jazz violinist Regina Carter.  The research side is something I’ve heard about less often- and I suspect many of my readers are the same.  It’s just not my space within the music community.

It wasn’t always Aaron Colverson’s space either.  When I first met him, he was a performance major at Berklee.  Now a Ph.D. student at the University of Florida, studying ethnomusicology, with partnering research in neuropsychology, he joins me in this episode to discuss the opportunities available to musicians in the health space as well as his personal journey from primarily performer to researcher.

Our discussion includes...

  • What opportunities exist for musicians in both research and clinical settings including
    • NIH’s new initiative for funding for “Sound Health”
    • Playing music for seniors
  • How academic education and the research side of sound health can work for musicians
  • The journey from performance major to academic
  • His experiences in a Kenyan exchange program and their effects on his view of music and music career options
  • The diversity of career paths in music and the importance of figuring out who you are
  • How the concepts of capitalistic competition and constant comparison affects musicians and how we can overcome those pressures
  • The importance of reframing in overcoming negative pressures
  • The importance of empathy

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    About Our Guest...

    Aaron Colverson is a current PhD candidate at the University of Florida in Ethnomusicology, with partnering research in neuroscience. 

    Prior to becoming a researcher, Aaron was a performance major at the Berklee College of Music.  After graduating, he moved to Nairobi, Kenya as part of an exchange program.  Influenced by his experiences there, his career aspirations evolved away from performance into research, with a focus on the relationship between music and social engagement.    His current project is “Music, social engagement, and Alzheimer’s disease”.

    To find out more, you can email him at acolverson@ufl.edu or check out his research profile and personal websites.

    More resources

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