C’est le printemps! What an exciting time of year this is! The tulips are in full bloom and the leaves are coming out in a multitude of shades of green – lime greens, yellow greens, bright greens, chartreuse, moss greens – it’s scrumptious! Not only is it beautiful, spring also marks new beginnings and transitions, particularly with students graduating and entering the professional world. With beginnings come endings, and for all these students this means leaving the comfort of their university program where they have been supported by their professors and peers. Some of them will be going back home to take what they have learned here and translate it into their language and culture. That’s a wonderful challenge. Others will be trying their luck in a new place and explore the possibilities, but many will be staying here and becoming a part of our New England community. This is very exciting to me as it means more music therapy positions being created, more internship sites, more people at regional conferences, and just more music therapy juices flowing in the region.
 
Spring also marks our NER conference. This year it was held in the Berkshire’s, April 3-5, 2008, at the Cranwell Spa and Golf Resort in Lenox, MA. What a beautiful site this was. For those of us who were there it’s probably the closest we’ll ever be to feeling like royalty! The conference was as exciting and rejuvenating as always, thanks to the hard work of Lynne Patnode, Heather Bloom, and the conference committee. The conference began Thursday morning, with four CMTE courses being offered. Dr. Dale Taylor presented on Biomedical Music Therapy; Susan Mazer presented a guitar workshop that everyone loved; Bob Bloom went all out in his drumming workshop; and Joseph Pinson offered his years of songwriting experience.  The evening performance opened with Dr. Barbara Wheeler, AMTA President, highlighting the tenth anniversary of AMTA and presenting the AMTA Spirit of Unification award to Dr. Michele Forinash for her contributions over the past ten years and beyond, to AMTA and to the field of music therapy. This was followed by the unveiling of our new NER website, which was designed by our NER webmaster Mayumi Yamada Slazas, with the help of our new Technology and Communications Committee representative Ricardo Poza.  The evening continued with music by the Keith and Mazer Trio, playing an eclectic variety of acoustic tunes. What great voices they had and what a wonderful way to start a conference.  The next two days were filled with thought-provoking and inspiring presentations.

There were two events that stand out for me. The first was the NER Business meeting. I was so excited and honored to have the opportunity to present awards and because of AMTA’s 10th anniversary celebration, to look back at all that NER has accomplished. The first award presented was the Presidential Service Award that went to Jean Nemeth for her tireless NER representation on the Assembly of Delegates for many years. As a new member of the Assembly of Delegates in 1999, I remember listening to the assembly members begin taking apart the Report and Recommendations of the Commission on Education and Clinical Training, because they were uncomfortable and maybe afraid of the some of the changes that were suggested. There was a heavy, sinking feeling in the air. Then Jean came up to the microphone and suggested taking the controversial items out of the main text and putting them in a new section called “ For Future Consideration”. With this suggestion in mind, the air literally began to shift and within minutes the entire document was approved unanimously. I will never forget this moment, which for me is when I really met Jean!

NER has played an important role in the workings of the national association in so many ways. We have a number of important and active members living in this region, but more importantly, as a group we have remained at the forefront and innovative in our thinking, years before unification came into being. For this reason, the NER Executive Board also presented two special awards, entitled Celebrating Unity Awards, one to the NEC Executive Board of 1997, which included Kevin Krivanec, Marcia Lajoie, Julie Andring, Beverly Grogan, Virginia Balch, Jean Nemeth, and Linda Bosse for voting to put AAMT members on the slate for positions, months prior to the NAMT vote for unification. The other award was presented to the founders of the MMTA - Donna Chadwick, Michelle Glidden, and Karen Wack - for making unification a reality in Massachusetts seventeen years before it would happen in the rest of the country. These two acknowledgements were also made through song. As I was reading through comments I had solicited in preparing for a brief speech on unification (see Unification from a NER Prespective) Kimberly was using these same comments as a source of inspiration for a beautiful song she wrote for our NER. Thank you Kimberly.
   
Finally, you are probably wondering what the second event is that stands out for me! It was the debut of the NER Flute Choir. I believe there were a total of nine flautists on stage and I must say, we sounded pretty good! I am hoping that this will be a yearly event and that next year we will be twice in number, so please email me if you are interested in being a part of our group!

I wish you all a wonderful summer. Don’t forget to check out the new NER website. Also, registration for the AMTA national conference which will be held November 19-23 in St. Louis, Missouri, will be coming up soon. Thank you again to all of you for making this region what it is, a source of support, friendship, music, pride and inspiration to all of us. ~ Merci et a Bientot. Christine Routhier ~
Unification from a NER Perspective
(President’s comments made at the General Business meeting on April)

This year is a particularly special one for NER-AMTA in that it marks the 10th anniversary of unification and the birth of AMTA. You may wonder why this is so important to NER. In fact this is something that our region should be particularly proud of because we were a model for unification years before it happened. The Massachusetts Music Therapy Alliance (MMTA) was formed in 1980 with the intent of allying members of the American Association for Music Therapy (AAMT) with those of the National Association for Music Therapy (NAMT). In 1997, at the NEC (New England Chapter) conference at Berklee College of Music, the NEC Executive Board and the membership voted to put AAMT members on the slate for positions months prior to the official NAMT vote for unification. Now that’s cutting edge and something for us to be proud of. We have been ahead of our time for quite a while and in many different ways. This is one of the reasons we as a region have been nicknamed “ small but mighty”.

In thinking about AMTA’s 10th anniversary, I started looking back at what this meant to the New England Region and to its members. I sent out emails to a number of people asking for their feedback. I asked 3 questions: 

1.    How would you describe the process of unification from the perspective of MMTA, NEC-NAMT, and AAMT?
2.    What do you feel was most challenging for your association?
3.    What moment do you recall most vividly?

I would like to share with you some of the responses I received. I did not put people’s comments in quotes but as you read, keep in mind that these are your words, not mine. In describing the process people wrote: it was smooth; an extension of what was already happening; natural; there was a sense of destiny. Words like exciting, scary, apprehension, exhilarating, hopeful were used to express the feelings people had at the time. There was also a sense of uncertainty. The AAMT community feared loosing its identity, but its members also were aware of the reality that there would be strength in numbers. Many people also felt that it was about time; time to put differences aside; time to expand options and views on the field and work together for a more cohesive music therapy face to the public. From MMTA’s perspective it was felt that there were good, talented, sensible people in MA who had credentials from either NAMT or AAMT and who felt the national division was foolish and embarrassing to the profession. There was also the reality that NEC NAMT and AAMT folks had been working side by side for years in this region. There were people who as far back as the 1970’s were members of both associations. There was the sense that unification was long overdue and that the field was too small for such a split. People could keep their differences but the organization did not need to reflect this. Members described the process as joyful and enlightening at times, but fraught with tension and resistance, particularly with regards to integrating the research approaches (quantitative and qualitative) that were an integral part of the journals of each association.

This leads me to the next question where I asked the members what they felt was most challenging. People wrote things like: getting to know each other; honoring individuals and their backgrounds; putting aside and working with differences in practice, research, education and training for sake of the music therapy profession. From an AAMT perspective there was the sense that CMT’s (Certified Music Therapist – designation from AAMT) had a lot to offer in these areas, but how to give them weight or a voice, when their numbers were so out of proportion with RMT’s (Registered Music Therapist – designation from NAMT). It was feared that AAMT would be engulfed by NAMT, which would simply have a new name, and that all that AAMT members had worked to create would be lost. So when the word merger was used as synonymous to unification people got uncomfortable.  The feeling was that in the spirit of unification ideas from all sides would be equally heard but that this would not be the case in a merger. For people already involved in the national organization the challenge was about melding different ways of thinking, and developing a new and improved way of going about it as a new organization. Overall it was felt that differences were healthy, welcomed and would push the field forward.

Below are listed a few of the moments people most vividly recalled:
In 1982 the MMTA organized the first music therapy day at the Boston State House with RMT’s and CMT’s, clients, and state representatives present. There was only one music therapy association present that day – not two.

Unification continued…
At the 1996 NAMT conference in Nashville, one of the events was the creating of a music therapy quilt.  MMTA had made a quilt square that said CMT= RMT but it was never integrated into the quilt because it was deemed too controversial!

Around the same time, one member remembers being at an AAMT board meeting and hearing that NEC was looking for AAMT members to come on board pre-unification. It was time to act!

At the general business meeting during the Berklee conference in 1997, many people remembered when the general membership approved the executive board’s recommendation to put AAMT members on the slate. This was a very exciting time indeed!

Then after the conference, being at a NEC board meeting and suggesting a cabaret for the next conference and being told that the membership would not want to get up and play music for each other!

A year later, at our first NER conference, David Smith was present as our first AMTA president and we all wanted to show him how happy we were that the national organizations had finally come together as we had. We also held our first cabaret that weekend.

Another vivid moment for some was when the vision for the AAMT Music Therapy International Report became the on-line Voices.

Yet with all this happening, one member remembers being told that New England AAMT members didn’t like the region and wanted to join Mid-Atlantic! It is true that AAMT members were afraid of doing what MMTA had done twenty years earlier, because they were afraid and anxious of loosing what they had created and believed in. Yet in the end many people worked very hard to make sure that everyone was heard, even though it sometimes meant being pretty loud at times, but we all came together, maintaining our identity, learning from each other, growing, and creating an organization that we can all be proud of. We have become an association that embraces a wide range of approaches and philosophies and that is not compromised by dissention but is enriched by diversity. The seed for this national association was planted here in New England. I can’t imagine being a member of any other region right now and I could not be prouder than I am now to be president of this –  small but mighty – New England Region.