Foundation Drumming Circle

Here are some pictures of the Foundation Drumming Circle's event held Sunday, Sept. 28. The Drumming Circle is open to people who have special needs and meets Friday nights at 7 p.m. The group performs favorite contemporary music and appears by invitation at locations throughout the community. The next performance is at Fountainview Care Center on Tanglewood Lane in Mishawaka, just off Grape Road on Sunday Oct. 26 at 2:30 p.m.

Sept. 2008 Piano Recital

Here are some pictures from the Foundation's most recent piano recital at University Park Mall in Mishawaka, Ind. (More below...)

Our next recital is the annual Holiday extravaganza, planned for early December. There will be more soon about the what, where and when, but it will be as great as previous years, and with a new feature - a gift wrapping station to wrap up your presents while you listen to some beautiful music.

Tomorrow, we'll put up pictures from the Foundation drumming circle, so check back then. We also want to encourage anyone who would like to participate in this blog to send us an email or leave a comment. We want to hear from you - if you're a teacher, a student, a parent or a music enthusiast, this is your chance to share.

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Coming soon: We'll put up pictures from our most recent recital in September at University Park Mall, as well as a video of a drummers circle.

There will also be announcements of upcoming recitals and fundraisers, an updated Foundation brochure, and lots more very exciting stuff - you don't want to miss it, trust us.

Music as Medicine for the Brain

We'd love to hear from you if you have a great story to tell about how music has impacted your life, or if you recently read something that you just have to share.

Here's a great example, a link sent to us by Michele in South Bend. It's a U.S. News and World Report feature entitled Music as Medicine for the Brain, from July of this year. Here's a sample:

Music therapy has been practiced for decades as a way to treat neurological conditions from Parkinson's to Alzheimer's to anxiety and depression. Now, advances in neuroscience and brain imaging are revealing what's actually happening in the brain as patients listen to music or play instruments and why the therapy works. "It's been substantiated only in the last year or two that music therapy can help restore the loss of expressive language in patients with aphasia" following brain injury from stroke, says Oliver Sacks, the noted neurologist and professor at Columbia University, who explored the link between music and the brain in his recent book Musicophilia.

There are also links to videos and discussion groups.

More Foundation media coverage

Here are a couple more links to stories about the Foundation within the last year or two...

Yamaha Corporation did a feature in its Accent magazine in 2006. As you can see, Shannon McNeer is becoming quite the household name!

Also, here's a recent blurb from the Tribune's Arts Everywhere publication.

Hopefully more to come soon...

Welcome to the Foundation Blog!

Thanks for stopping by, we hope to have lots of easy-to-use features very soon. We plan to use this medium as a way to get more Foundation information out as quickly as possible. We'll also post about relevant news and provide plenty of links to information and websites that will help facilitate the discovery and joy of music.

Check back often and check out our sponsors as well, please (links coming soon!)

Healing Melody

The Foundation was recently featured in the South Bend Tribune's Health section:

By CHRISTINE COX

Tribune Staff Writer

Shannon McNeer can’t get to the piano fast enough. She throws her teacher a quick hello, speeds to the bench, opens her book and starts playing before he can settle beside her. ...

Read the full story on the South Bend Tribune website.

There's also an excellent photo gallery.