The Musician Healer: Transforming Art Into Medicine

Islene Runningdeer is a musician, therapist, educator, and writer who lives and works on the Acadian coast of Maine. She draws upon her French and Mi'kmaq/Abenaki First Nation roots to make music a joy. For more than forty years she has used music as a medicine, to teach students about their own capacity for creative freedom and health, to aid and comfort patients and families during the dying process, to draw people with severe dementia out of their isolation and confusion, to uplift and calm anyone within hearing, whether in church, the concert hall, the hospital, or the living room. Her primary instruments are piano and voice. Educated at New England Conservatory, University of Massachusetts/Amherst and University of Vermont, her work blends her lifelong interest in music of all kinds, psychology, physical health and spirituality. She is also the author of Musical Encounters with Dying: Stories and Lessons.