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Dr. Louise Montello
Louise Montello is an internationally known authority on music and wellness and award-winning author of "Essential Musical Intelligence: Using Music as Your Path to Healing, Creativity and Radiant Wholeness" (Quest 2002). A licensed psychoanalyst, music therapist, and Founder/Director of the Creative Arts Therapy Certificate Program at The New School, Dr. Montello conducted clinical research on the use of an integrative music therapy approach to treating and preventing musicians' stress-related disorders in the Department of Psychology at New York University for over ten years. In an effort to bring her ground-breaking music therapy-based prevention program to the musical community, Dr. Montello co-founded a not-for-profit organization, Musicians' Wellness, Inc. with her NYU research partner, neuropsychologist and composer, Dr. Edgar E. Coons, in 2000.
Musicians from all over the world responded to the call of Musicians' Wellness, Inc., dedicated to meeting the mental and behavioral health needs of performing musicians. To serve performers in a more systematic and effective way, Louise developed the Three-Level Certificate Training Program in Performance Wellness, based on her clinical research at NYU, which she offered to professional musicians, students, educators and clinicians at conservatories and Arts Medicine/Music Therapy conferences throughout Europe, Asia, Scandinavia, and the U.S.
In 1992, Louise presented her work at the American Occupational Health Conference in Washington, D.C. In 1993, she was invited to lead a seminar at the First U.S./Japan Arts Medicine Leaders Conference in Tokyo. The organizers of the 5th Annual Meeting of the International Association for Music Medicine & Science invited Louise to Tel Aviv to present her work on understanding the relationship between stress and immunity in professional musicians.
Having conducted Performance Wellness workshops in Hamburg, Amsterdam, London, York, Corfu, Thessaloniki, and Vitoria-Gastiez, Louise is well known in the European music therapy community. She has also been an artist-in-residence at the Gothenburg Conservatory in Sweden, Ewha University in Seoul, Korea, Berklee College of Music in Boston, the Musicians' Union in London, and the Manhattan School of Music.
In 2003, Louise began offering the Level I Performance Wellness Training to New York City music teachers. She was surprised when numerous teachers from other disciplines flocked to her course. It dawned on her that Performance Wellness was not just for musicians! She began to work with her PW Trainers to expand the scope of Musicians' Wellness, Inc. to include teachers, health professionals, individuals with public speaking fears, emotionally disturbed/learning disabled children, along with individuals from the corporate sector. A new name and identity naturally evolved from that of the original organization, Musicians' Wellness, Inc., to the new expanded one, Performance Wellness, Inc.
Over the last four years, in addition to training and lecturing on PW and EMI in NYC and abroad, Louise has been developing training materials to assist students and trainees in mastering the Performance Wellness/ Essential Musical Intelligence techniques. These include Wellness Manuals, Workbooks, CD's, and an EMI Journal and Giftbook. She also continues to perform as a free-lance jazz pianist and composer. Louise currently lives in New York City and in the beautiful Pocono mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania.