When Music Happens

What Happens When Music Happens?

Singer/songwriter, music therapist, and philosopher of music, Paul Lauzon, asks and answers this question in this truly unique book.

When Music Happens combines a poetics of music with a scholarly exploration that draws on biological, neurological, emotional, psychological, and ecological experience and response. The author illuminates “the anatomy of a musical being” at every stage of life; he unfolds a holistic “Music Systems Theory” that provides a coherent context for the practice of music therapy. The result is a book that shows the way music pervades human existence and why it is effective as a developmental discipline and as an integrative therapy.

In When Music Happens, Paul Lauzon offers us an extraordinary personal, philosophical, and scholarly experience of the poetry of music — to which he gives the name, melopoetics.

Rooted in his extensive life experience as a music therapist, musician/performer, poet, and educator, Lauzon, in Part One, weaves images of music throughout his title poem, “When Music Happens.” In the reference section to the poem, Lauzon shares extensive notes on key phrases in the poem, embellishing them with a vast and truly impressive extended background of information. In Part Two, Lauzon consolidates his work with the concise but comprehensive essay, “Anatomy of a Musical Being: A Music Systems Theory of Music Therapy.”

When Music Happens is a must read for musicians, music therapists, neuroscientists, and anyone who wishes to be inspired, educated, transformed by the full mind/body/spirit experience of Paul Lauzon’s gift of poetry and scholarship.

– Elizabeth Moffitt MTA MA, Faculty Emeritus of Music Therapy, Capilano University

Paul Lauzon’s richly layered and soul-felt poetry brings music into every fiber of our being. We walk with him in tune with the songs of the earth and the feelings of humankind while absorbing his profound research into the physiology of music making and appreciation.

– Wendy Dathan, Curator of the Grand Manan Museum (retired) Author of The Reindeer Botanist: Alf Erling Porshild, 1901-1977

Paul Lauzon’s poetry opens heart-paths to gardens of delight, stirs wave-depths of forgotten emotions, flings wide gates to unexplored spiritual realms. It is a delight to revisit again and again.

– Suzanne Schuurman, educator and knitwear artist, Author of Tristan: Physically and Mentally Handicapped … Socially and Spiritually Gifted and Legacy of Courage: The Life of Ola Pawlowska.

Paul Lauzon is a poet, songwriter, and music therapist. For decades, his work has focused on exploring the many interconnections of sound and sense, of music and words. As a singer/songwriter, he has toured widely and released several recordings of original songs. As a clinical music therapist, he has worked with individuals in stages of life from pre-natal to palliative care. His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in several international music therapy journals. He is founding professor of the Music Therapy Program at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

This is his first published book of poems. Working with Chapel Street Editions has drawn him back to his roots along the Wolastoq (Saint John River) in New Brunswick.