Letter from the President January 2022

“Music, Memory, and Spirit”

Dear Reader,

Recently, a friend shared that he had written poems and songs, played in a Country and Western band. As he shared songs he had written years ago, I recalled how my interest in music began when I was in junior high school and played the trumpet in the band. That is when I came to appreciate classical music for the first time.

My interest awakened, I went to the downtown music store in Shreveport, LA. I only knew I wanted to buy a recording (on a vinyl disk) that was classical music. As I thumbed through the stack, one record caught my eye. It was a recording of Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite by the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with Sr. Thomas Beecham conducting.

I will never forget the day I put the record on my tiny record player and set the needle on the vinyl surface. It was like electricity when I heard for the first time the movement in Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite entitled, In the Hall of the Mountain King. I must have played it a thousand times as a young boy, and it captured me.

Decades later, when I mentioned Greig’s composition to my friend, I immediately could hear the stirring melody of In the Hall of the Mountain King coursing through my mind. I returned home and immediately went to YouTube and listened with joy to the magnificent composition. As with non-representational abstract art, music, even without words, can communicate the spirit and touch our hearts like nothing else. Every time I hear John Lennon’s song Imagine, that happens to me. It also happens when I sing many of the great hymns in our church.

Musical moments can create memories for all of us. It may happen when we attend a rock concert, a musical on Broadway, or a movie, Amadeus. How does this happen? I believe it goes beyond our frontal cortical brain and stirs the deeper core of what it means to be a human being. It can transport us to a new dimension.

Has that happened to you? I feel sure it has. I would love to hear your stories of how music has touched your heart and perhaps transformed your life.
Yes, including a warm embrace—something we have not done in a long time because of the pandemic.

John K. Graham, President and CEO – Institute for Spirituality and Health