Dr. Taylor honored “Notable history-maker in Music Therapy”

Dr. Taylor was honored by the American Music Therapy Association’s Black Music Therapy Network for “achievements and contributions to our field” as a “notable history-maker in Music Therapy” at the 2017 national conference in St. Louis on November 18. This conference marks the 50-year anniversary of his appointment as Chair of the NAMT International Activities Committee, his first music therapy office. Since that time, he has continuously held one or more regional, national or international offices serving our organization and the music therapy profession such as Great Lakes Region President, National Student Coordinator, Certification-Registration Chair, Assembly of Delegates, Editor of the International Journal of Arts Medicine, and he currently serves on the AMTA Music & Memory Work Group. The award notes his “exemplary legacy of service.”

Dr. Taylor honored by the American Music Therapy Association’s Black Music Therapy Network

He founded a music therapy degree program at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, was promoted four times and served eight years as Chair of the Department of Allied Health Professions. He has presented on every inhabited continent and other locations such as Japan, New Zealand and Hawaii. He was the opening speaker at the 2008 Mozart & Science Conference in Vienna and the opening Keynote speaker for the 2016 Online Conference for Music Therapy.

He wrote the first historical research paper ever published by the Journal of Music Therapy as well as other papers appearing in Music Therapy Perspectives and Approaches in Music Therapy. He served on the 1996 National Conference Program Committee, and hosted a Great Lakes Region conference during which he chaired the founding of the Wisconsin Chapter for Music Therapy.

In 1990, he was the first to propose a theory of music therapy based on the causal effects of music on brain functioning. He wrote two books on music therapy and the brain, and in 1985, he originated use of the word “plasticity” as a term in neuroscience.

He studied under Gaston, Sears, Radocy and others at the University of Kansas and has held academic appointments at 7 different colleges and universities in the US and abroad. He is best known as the author of Biomedical Foundations of Music as Therapy.