MEGAN KIDBY
Asst. Scallion Editor
On Sunday, April 1, Fredonia’s Music Therapy Club had great success when they hosted their first inaugural Music Therapy Mini-Conference.
This year’s conference was held in the Williams Center MPR and various other rooms in the building. The free event focused on various topics, such as vocal health, anti-ableism and clinical songwriting.
“Today I’m most excited to see all of our speakers’ presentations,” said Lizzy Davis, a Fredonia junior double major in music therapy and performance and president of the Music Therapy Club. “We have a lot of great stuff happening … there’s a lot of great topics so I’m just thrilled.”
Attendees ranged from music therapy students from multiple schools, professional music therapists and even Fredonia students outside the major.
“I’m really excited for all the experiences that we’re going to be taking part in and all of the events,” said Ethan Smith, a Fredonia junior music therapy major and attendee of the conference.
To kick off the conference, the keynote speaker Wade Richards, an alumni of Fredonia and one of the owners/directors of Spectrum Creative Arts, an arts education and therapy center in Rochester, N.Y., spoke about how music collaboration inspires creativity. To demonstrate this, Wade invited the participants to come up with improvised dances, melodies and spoken-word poems based on prompts.
When asked afterwards about what music therapy means to him, Wade said, “Music therapy is so connected to my spirit and soul with creativity and making music. I am so thankful I have it as my career.”
Wade also talked about his time at Fredonia.
“When I went through the [music therapy] program, there were maybe about six or seven of us in our class,” Wade said. “It’s really great to see how things have grown and expanded, and I’m super excited for [Fredonia students] to have their first conference and to be a part of it.”
Thanks to the success of this first conference, music therapy majors can expect more Mini-Conferences to come in future years thanks to the Music Therapy Club.
Megan Kidby, the author of this article, is a music therapy major and a member of the Music Therapy Club.
“Today, I’m hoping to gain new perspectives and outlooks on things and hopefully see how people approach things from a different direction,” said Dominick Orlando, a junior music therapy major from Fredonia and an attendee of the conference.