Welcome to the Mind Body Music School! (Start Here)

by Peter Jacobson

Welcome to the Mind Body Music School (MBMS)! 

My name is Peter Jacobson, the founder and executive director of MBMS. In this initial blog post, I’d like to share more about our school – what we do, why we do it, and how we help musicians and music teachers. 

Though our name and website are new, our school is not. The Mind Body Music School is an expansion of Total Vocal Freedom, a school for singers and voice teachers I founded in 2014 after completing my Alexander Technique teacher training and graduate studies in conducting. 

Starting a music school that combined my passion for music education and the Alexander Technique was a longtime dream of mine. Since opening our doors, I’m very proud of the fact that we have helped hundreds of singers and voice teachers. Now, under the Mind Body Music School name, we will also be serving instrumentalists, instrumental music teachers, classroom music teachers and conductors. 

A little bit about why we exist…

As I look around the music field, I am often disturbed by the amount of unnecessary pain and suffering I see among musicians and teachers. It’s not just physical pain. Musicians suffer in other ways – emotionally, mentally and spiritually. What makes it worse is that so many musicians suffer silently without a supportive place to get constructive solutions to their challenges. 

That’s why, in the Mind Body Music School, our number one priority is the health, well-being and humanity of the whole musician. 

Our mission is to train musicians who are not only highly-skilled but also healthy, whole, creative and kind. 

We do that via: 

• Our Curriculum – a whole-person, integrative approach that brings together best practices from the fields of music education, Body Mapping and the Alexander Technique.
• Our Community – by cultivating a social environment that is constructive, supportive, stimulating and affirms the dignity and worth of every learner.

We want our school to continue to serve as a model of what a student-centered, health-focused, humanity-affirming place of learning can be. A place where musicians and music teachers alike can deepen into their artistry with freedom, passion and joy. 

We hope that this blog will be a resource for all musicians. (If you’d like to be notified when new content is posted, join our mailing list here.) We plan to share a variety of offerings in this space, ranging from content that addresses issues common to all music-makers (practice, body use, mindset, musicianship, personal story, etc.) to content focused on specific subject areas like voice use, specific instruments, conducting, musical styles, and teaching issues. 

As a reflection of our commitment to music education and music educators, our first official offering under the Mind Body Music School name is The 2023 Winter Music Teaching Festival, a 3-day series of online classes specifically for music teachers and conductors (vocal and instrumental) from February 14-16, 2023. (If you're reading this post after those dates you can still register here to watch the replays.)

Thank you for reading and your interest in MBMS.

(PS – Do you have a request for an article on a specific issue or theme related to music making or teaching? Reach out to us directly here.)