Consistent with our recurring theme of how music has a positive impact on our lives, we talk about how music teaches those who learn to play to express themselves better, not just through music but in other ways, including in their careers outside music and their social interactions.

A composer, conductor, and journalist, and the founder, publisher, and principal writer of EarRelevant.net, Mark Gresham has been writing about classical and post-classical music and other arts for more than 35 years. He co-founded the monthly publication Chorus! in 1989 and edited it through 1995. Thirteen of his interviews from the magazine were published in 1997 as the book, Choral Conversations. Before founding EarRelevant, he was a contributing writer for Creative Loafing from 2002 to 2011 and then for ArtsATL until mid-February 2019. In this episode of Music Life & Times, Mark discusses his life-long involvement with music in multiple capacities, how music has shaped his life, and its impact on all of us.

Lisa Campbell Albert sings and teaches others to do the same. For more than 30 years she has been singing and playing keyboard, leading her and her husband’s blues band, Uncle Albert, performing in and around St. Louis as well as nationally and internationally, including regular annual appearances in Germany. She has also channeled her knowledge from her academic studies as well as her professional experience into a career as an educator, currently as a professor at the Webster University Conservatory Theatre. Her book on singing, co-authored with fellow professor Bill Lynch, is titled The Moment Before the Music Begins. In our podcast, she talks about her work coaching all types of singers and, most importantly, that each must find their own voice. It was the turning point of her career, she notes: “I’m going to sound like Lisa” and her audiences would have to “take me as I am.” Now nearing 60 and still “singin’ the blues,” she reflects on the key life lessons being a musician has taught her, that “Every time I take a new step I find a different part of me that lets me exhale,” and that music has allowed her to find herself as “a person who’s authentic and happy.”