ROB HOCHSCHILD: Hello, I'm Rob Hochschild, Associate Professor for Liberal Arts for the Berklee Oral History Project, and we're very fortunate to have with us today Peg Codding, Professor of Music Therapy. She has been at Berklee since the late nineties, joined the faculty, was already an innovator in the field, having been chair of Music Therapy at Ohio University and already very accomplished in the field, and we're going to get into all of that in this conversation today. Peg, thank you so much for the conversation. 

PEGGY CODDING: Thank you for having me. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Absolutely. So you came to Berklee in the nineties. That was a few years after the department was established. I was hoping we could just start, even though we're going to go back in time and talk about all of your life and work, if you could just give us a definition of yourself looking at now or your whole career. How do you describe your work as a music therapist, either in terms of the people you've worked with or your approach to research or any parameter you choose? Who are you as a music therapist? 

PEGGY CODDING: That's such a challenging question, and I knew it would come to that one day, that someone would make me answer that question. [Laughs] Because that's a question that we ask our students, always to try to find after their studies a way to begin to define themselves in some way along the way, and then we ask them that again. The last time I answered that question I was a doctoral student, and it was not my favorite question then either. [Laughs] 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Well I'm glad we're starting off with it then! [Both laugh] 

PEGGY CODDING: But it is a good question to ask, and I think one of the ways that we're challenged is to say, who are you as a human being? Hopefully I would define that as saying that one, I see myself as a humanist. And that always by some standards people say "Oh she's too soft!" So hopefully I would add to that that I aim for some level of insight, and that I hopefully see myself as a person who is knowledgeable, I'm able to mentor. And that I can to see beyond the moment but also have a presence in the moment to see what's going on in the moment--with students or with a client or clients--what's going on in the group, but also what's going on with the individuals in terms of where they have been, to my knowledge, where they are in the moment, and where they're moving. And that's challenging for an educator or for a therapist. We're as faculty and as clinicians trying to do all of those things, in the classroom and the clinic. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Wow. 

PEGGY CODDING: Because we teach in the clinic as well as in the classroom. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: That's amazing. You're in the moment with whoever you're with, and you're also thinking about where this person has come from and where you're going. That sounds like a herculean task. 

PEGGY CODDING: Obviously, we fail quite a bit. [Laughs] 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: We're all human beings. So we'll talk more about how you actually pulled that off over time. Let's go back to the beginning. How did you first get turned on the music, where did you grow up? When did you realize music was going to be a focal point in your life? 

PEGGY CODDING: That's an interesting question for me because my best is not always talking about myself, which is probably why I got into this field. [Laughs] But I came to music in a somewhat unusual way. My parent's generation was really the World War II generation, which dates me a lot. And that was a generation in this country--and really around the world, if I may go there a little bit--it was one of the wars to end all wars, and people were coming back to this country or whichever country to start new lives. The economy was about to boom, but there were also people coming back broken, as we see now with the refugee situation. It's a time of change now and it was a time of change then. And how that relates to me and my music is--I'm not going to give you a world history lesson [laughs]--that my family was one of those. All my uncles went to war. My father went to war. My uncles came back in pretty good shape; my father did not. Now we call that PTSD. He came back violent, he came back unable to express. My family was broken. So in my own life, my brother and I were orphaned not by death, but by emotional distress. And so we were literally placed in an orphanage at that time. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: You were what age? 

PEGGY CODDING: My brother was five or six. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: And where did you grow up? Where was this happening? 

PEGGY CODDING: Colorado. My family was homeless and we were in this orphanage. I'm fine. I don't ever tell this story because people have this look about them like ,"Oh!" you know, the world ends. But the fact is, it's a story that is also happening in the world today, so I will bring it to the present. So in that time I still had family but I didn't have family. They were out there, but I couldn't touch them, I couldn't see them. And no one explained to me when that happened what was happening. I was just here one day and somewhere else another day. So I literally hid under the bed for however long. When I came out--this is actually a beautiful story, if I may--when I came out, the beauty of that was I found dance and I found music. I found music through a woman who was also an orphan of World War II. She had been in Auschwitz and had lost her family. She said she was a student of a teacher who had been a student of a teacher who had been a student of Liszt. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Oh my goodness. 

PEGGY CODDING: So I had the most phenomenal piano teacher who, like me, was looking to find her voice one more time in piano. There we were, basically two orphans who were looking to play and find our voices, me for the first time and her again. We sat in a beautiful room and she taught me music. She spoke in this very strong German accent and taught me the music of great musicians and told me the stories--not of her terror, nor me, because I had no words to her, but through music. I learned these beautiful melodies. She would put her hands on mine and teach me. So this is a really long story. But I had learned to dance and I had great teachers who had come in to work with us. So I began to play, and--I turned out to be pretty good--so I went out for this organization nationally, and I would play and then I would speak for this organization. This little shy child became a speaker and a player. So I came to music in that way, and I came to dance in that way. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So you were four when you first went on your own and then shortly thereafter started studying piano. When did the speaking start? 

PEGGY CODDING: I was probably, oh, maybe ten. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Wow. And you were speaking to who? 

PEGGY CODDING: National audiences. I was playing for a group known as the National Benevolent Association and that got me out. Small groups and then larger groups. And then I would play. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: You would play and speak to them. These almost sound like Ted Talks in a way. 

PEGGY CODDING: Well they were probably some of the early kinds of Ted Talks. This shy child became this person who would perform and would speak. And thank goodness that I did. It was not therapy at the time, but it was my therapy. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: What was the subject matter of these talks? 

PEGGY CODDING: It was really about music, it was about this organization, it was about children and some of it was just here I was. But it was also, if I may, I don't know if you know about the eugenics movement-- 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: I don't know a lot about it. 

PEGGY CODDING: But, I do. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Okay. 

PEGGY CODDING: Because I became a poster child for this organization. And the eugenics movement was really many things, some of it is not so great, but that's a whole other thing. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: We'll cover that in the next episode. 

PEGGY CODDING: That's another lecture, but I teach that in my classes. The eugenics movement was really about selection, as you know, and selection for the quote "good," for finding the fittest of our society. Actually in its purest form, it's procreation for the fittest and selection away from disability, which is what I teach. So children who were placed in these kinds of homes were really those who were on the outskirts of the normal curve, usually to the left. Usually those who were disabled and really those who were cast away in society. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So you were speaking on behalf of the eugenics people in this role? 

PEGGY CODDING: So the eugenics movement, they would take people who were basically outcasts and they were trying to move them more toward the norm. Now would a little child know that? No. But then trying to move children to the norm through the arts. That's not really what this particular organization thought they were doing, but in the context of history, one can make a case for that. In fact, it's very easy to do when you go back and look at the fifties, the sixties, and even into the seventies, when organizations such as this one and the orphanages that existed and the exclusion model that we talk about in our classes existed, before legislated inclusion, which is what the seventies were about. And now we're moving into neurodiversity, which is a different model. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: It's so interesting that you had this experience as a child, opening up to you thinking around those issues. 

PEGGY CODDING: And now I teach that. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Yeah. 

PEGGY CODDING: But I don't teach that in terms of--rarely have I talked about my own experience of that because for the most part, people have an adverse reaction. With great respect, it's sort of people talking about the worst thing that ever happened to them, which it isn't. You know, you have to bring people along with you and say, "Oh, you know, I'm really okay." And that's really not what we do in class so I don't usually talk about that. But I can easily. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So before you went to college did you reconnect with your parents, or did the orphanage you work for mark your childhood? 

PEGGY CODDING: I was there through [age] fourteen. My mother did reconnect, but my mother was not whole, so I had another negative experience. This is really a book I should write--I will write actually--I did reconnect with my mother; however, it was a very difficult experience. What happened is that I received a full scholarship to music school ,and I had as it turns out great genes in many respects. My academics and music pulled me through, and so I've had wonderful experience tapping those scholarships. And I've had some phenomenal mentoring which is really something I care deeply about in education. That has really formed me both as an educator and I think as a human being. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Wow, I'd love to hear about those mentors. So was it about the early 1970s when you went to college and studied music? 

PEGGY CODDING: Yes. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: I want to hear about that. I do want to ask though, what were you listening to? You were playing classical and studying classical music? Did you listen and focus exclusively on classical music? You grew up in the sixties and early seventies, coming of age. What were you listening to? 

PEGGY CODDING: Well, I was listening to certainly classical music, but those were, as we tell our students, those were really good times in pop music and contemporary music in our society, the sixties and some of the seventies as well, in contemporary music. That was Simon and Garfunkel, that was California, that was all those good tunes. So my college life was just album after album of all that really good stuff. I shouldn't say this, but in class I tell them who they get, which is some of the current people, but you can't have our folks. [Rob laughs] Some of those people that we had, Pulitzer Prize-winning artists and poetry. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Absolutely. So did you study contemporary music in college or was it more of a classical thing? 

PEGGY CODDING: My training was more classical, I loved German Lied because I had such great teachers in German Lied. I loved classical piano, but like everyone else snuck out to hear those great contemporary concerts. I'm from Colorado, I would go to Red Rocks and stay twenty-four hours to sit in the great seats to hear, like everybody else did. But I wasn't at Berklee. I wasn't coming here and hearing what our students hear in contemporary music. I didn't get that till later. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Okay, so the degree was in performance? 

PEGGY CODDING: My bachelor's degrees are in music therapy and music education, both. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So there was a music therapy program at--what was the name of the university? 

PEGGY CODDING: Phillips University, which was a really strong liberal arts school. And I wanted to go there for the liberal arts school as much as the music. It was an excellent school. And I wanted to be around my brother, who happened to be going there. I had not been around him so I wanted to spend a year with him there, so I did that as well. And then I did a psychiatric internship in music therapy and I did some teaching. I wanted to be in a rural school to do some teaching with the most wayward kids I could find. And I found them. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: And that was near Phillips in Oklahoma, right? 

PEGGY CODDING: Yes, and that's in the middle of the country, if you don't know where Oklahoma is. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: [Laughs] Right smack in the middle of the country. 

PEGGY CODDING: Right smack, yeah. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: It's interesting that you're able to study music therapy and start getting into the field at that time, because I think a lot of us in the Berklee universe have this sense--and obviously it's not true--that music therapy as a discipline that's studied seriously on the baccalaureate level began at Berklee. Obviously, you chaired a program at Ohio University before coming to Berklee. You studied it at Phillips in the early seventies. So what was the field of music therapy like? What were the perceptions about it? What was it like to be working in the field at that time? 

PEGGY CODDING: It was a different kind of program but it was in a sense, pure. What I mean by that is, again, if you go back to World War II, people were coming back from the war and being placed in hospitals where no one knew what to do with them. No one knew what PTSD was, people had a lot of wounds that were pretty severe. It was musicians, like Berklee musicians, the people that you know and work with everyday who went into the hospitals and played. People didn't know what to do. And they took the gifts that they had into the hospitals, anybody that you know here, and they went and played. The medical people found that people were beginning to talk to each other, people were getting out of the hospital sooner, healing faster both psychiatrically and physically. They were saying "Why is that?" 

And then there were few individuals who had some training, especially psychiatrically, and just some awareness individuals who said, "Hm, what is this music thing?" And I knew some of them, not as my contemporaries but as my professors who were predominately music educators. And they said "Let's look at this." And they put together a curriculum, predominantly in Kansas--I know, Kansas, really? [Chuckles] They later moved our organization to the DC area, which--there was a lot more going on, as you might guess there. And we began to study the effects of music on behavior. Now, we're at a cellular level, so we're studying how music affects the cells. And it does. We can see changes in your brain based on music. And when I speak of that in class, we know we have the studies. But when I speak about how we'll be wearing chips very soon in our brains, and we're going to be changing the channel basically, and maybe we can predict what will happen when we play this type of music and how it affects cancer cells, et cetera, et cetera.That's what our students are going to see. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Wow. So we're going to be able to get more and more specific on how to use music therapy to treat ailments of one kind or another? 

PEGGY CODDING: Yeah, and we're not yet talking about cures. We're not talking about that. But at this level we're talking about evidence-based music therapy, which means there's research addressing specific goals and objectives, based on identifiable problems both psychiatric and physical and immune system disorders. And there's changes that we see, and there's changes for example in the brain and they're clear. Those studies are being repeated so we can look at the evidence not only in a study but multiple studies. And not only we are doing those, but also the medical researchers are doing those. We just had at Berklee a wonderful day of medical and music individuals from all around the country come with great excitement to Berklee to talk over these issues and streamed it internationally. We thought we'd have twenty people wanting to get in and we were turning people away right and left. This is not the first, but we are becoming certainly a center for the questions and also people wanting to find the answers collectively. So your question was what were the seventies like? The seventies were individuals looking for how we address broken individuals. And now, we're still doing that because we still have broken individuals. But we're doing that now with more education and more focus. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So back then the focus wasn't really research like it is now? 

PEGGY CODDING: We were beginning to do it but it was very qualitative research. Which still has validity, I don't want to get myself in trouble. I'm a quantitative researcher. Now we also, because we deal so much with the medical community and Berklee's program is predominantly a medical program, then it's also very quantitative. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Right, got to have the data. 

PEGGY CODDING: Yes. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So was there more skepticism back then about the healing powers of music in this realm? 

PEGGY CODDING: Clearly. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: And how did you deal with that? What did that resistance look like and how did you overcome it? 

PEGGY CODDING: Well, you know, "Why aren't you performing?" was one of them. "Why don't you do that all the time?" Of course performing is a wonderful thing, and I love that and I would be doing more of that even now--except I got hurt so I can't do that as much as I wanted to. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Like Carpal Tunnel? 

PEGGY CODDING: No, I fell off a ledge in Colorado. [Laughs] So that kind of does it. It was not good planning on my part. But I want to be clear: music therapy for me was not a second choice. It was never a second choice. I went to graduate school, and I studied research, and I chose areas I wanted to work in because I felt like it mattered. I went to do a PhD in a school where the program was very challenging. Not because I couldn't perform, but because I felt it was important to do that. And it was a place where one could clearly make a contribution-- and I feel that I do. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So this was at Florida State where you went to graduate school right? 

PEGGY CODDING: Yes. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Was that a music therapy-centric program or music therapy was part of an overarching approach to therapy and education? 

PEGGY CODDING: It's a very strong music therapy program and very research based. It's very medical in its nature, and I was very strongly mentored by people who now--if you're counting records--one football, two research. Did you get that? Because I want to make sure. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Actually, no. One football to research? Can you explain? 

PEGGY CODDING: Well, You know football, the Seminoles. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Oh okay, it was the number one thing in Florida. The number two thing was research. 

PEGGY CODDING: Yeah. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Oh okay. Thank you. [Both laugh] 

PEGGY CODDING: Sorry. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: I should know this, I know a little bit about sports. 

PEGGY CODDING: You can cut that out, it's alright. [Both laugh] 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So what was the focus of your studies at Florida State? Did it begin to come clear to you where you wanted to go in the field? Did you have a particular emphasis in your research? 

PEGGY CODDING: Yes, but it will not be anything we've discussed yet because in addition to piano, I also love guitar. I started studying guitar late. I started studying guitar in junior high and I fell in love with the instrument. I love it passionately. I play still, but not well since I got hurt. Florida State also at the time that I was there had the person as the teacher there who had won the international guitar competition multiple times, and his studio was across the hall from mine. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Oh man. Who was this person? 

PEGGY CODDING: His name was Adam Holzman. I was in love with his guitar, in love with his fingers. Because I was there to be a graduate assistant and to work in the music therapy program, I was not allowed to study with him, because my major professor Clifford Madson, who is a stunning educator and researcher, was, rightfully so, guiding me to say, "You cannot be amazing at both of these two things." And that was his job. It's true. If you want to be a wonderful pianist, you have to have a lot of luck and more talent, so one can't do both. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Right. 

PEGGY CODDING: So I had to sit across the hall from him and watch students sit outside his studio and listen to him play. And there were tears, I have to admit, there were tears. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: [Laughs] Were you also focused on classical guitar playing? 

PEGGY CODDING: Yes, that's who he was. I love classical guitar. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Alright, me too, actually. You mentioned the names of one of your mentors in music therapy in Florida. What was the name of that person again? 

PEGGY CODDING: Clifford Madson. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So what sort of role did he play in helping to clarify where you wanted to go? 

PEGGY CODDING: Thank you, that's a great question, I appreciate that. I met him--though I had known of him for a number of years--I met him at a couple-week seminar that was one of the events of my life where I was asked to speak. And I was a young buck, I had been in the profession an hour. [Laughs] It felt like an hour. And I was asked to speak and help change some politics and we were working at a national level trying to changewe'd gotten a huge grant from the federal legislature, Congress, to work with seniors in the eighties, and to use music versus medication with seniors who were not receiving much attention at the time in our country. Go figure. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Yeah, I know. Was there a specific sort of thing that you were trying to address through the music therapy? 

PEGGY CODDING: Isolation, depression, early death, family separation, caregivers and the lack of care that they receive. All those things that you read about. Seniors in our country receive--this is a whole other topic we could talk about, it's something I care deeply about. So I was asked to come and work on these issues and, from this, go speak around the country. So I went and Dr. Madson was there. I'd heard him, I'd heard some of his graduate assistants at the time, doctoral students at the time, and he just keyed into so many things for me. It was one of those moments we all have where you go: "Yes." And I had a "yes" moment. At that time he spoke to me, and about a month later he called and said, "Would you like to come to school here?" I said, "How am I going to make this happen?" Because I was a young buck educator at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, freezing to death--though I love snow--and I was going to go to Florida. And he made it happen and I did that. I was so lucky to get to do that. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: You wound up getting your master's and PhD at Florida? 

PEGGY CODDING: I did. I had started getting a master's at another school, and I needed a break because I had gone pretty much straight through school. I said, "I need a break." So I went to Nashville and drove a tour bus-- 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Oh wow. 

PEGGY CODDING: And gave tours of Nashville. Anybody you want to know about, including Donna McElroy. [Both laugh] 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Oh right! She might have been there around that time. 

PEGGY CODDING: She was, actually. I waited tables till I couldn't stand it for about a year. I had not finished my master's, I was all about two lines on my thesis. So I just finished it. I went back and taught at this wonderful school University of Wisconsin Eau Claire and needed to finish those two lines and he said, "Just come do it here." So I did my study and--one day I went to the mailbox and there was my master's degree. I guess I finished and then I just continued. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: When you look at the person and professional you were when you completed that education at Florida State, how had you evolved? What did you feel like you were prepared to do at that point? 

PEGGY CODDING: I think there are people in our lives who touch us in ways he, Dr. Madson did. Jayne Standley who was one of my teachers there. There were others but certainly those two people who just find a way to encourage our malleability, both as students in our brains but also in our humanity, and I needed that. I had just come from, each step along the way, just kind of pushing as a kid who's just going to make it in some way to just becoming a human being, and being mentored in a way I had never been before. And it was not only me, it was all of us. And since that time, if I may, there has been that group of people and about maybe forty others who have been in a group that I think you read about, that have worked together now for fifty years--I haven't been a part of it that long--but who had started from a small group of those people, with Dr. Madson and maybe six other people, students and faculty who decided to work together and mentor each other and whoever came from them. And now fifty years later, they are now an international group. A small group on purpose who do research together, who write together, who mentor each other's doctoral students and give opportunities. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Is this an informal grouping or is this a formal? 

PEGGY CODDING: It's a structured group, and we meet every couple years. We see each other in between but every couple years we meet for three days and we do wonderful research and we present that research. It's always excellent. We publish together, we write books together. If I have someone who I think will be a great doctoral student, I can call up those people and say, "I've got a student" and they say, "Okay." It's incredible. That mentorship came from people sitting in a hotel room saying, "We want to continue this. We want mentorship to be meaningful." So I was able to partake in that while I was still a doctoral student. I was invited. It has a tenure system in the best sense of the word. I nurture you, you nurture someone. And then it becomes a lifelong experience. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: And you continue to be connected with people, colleagues and mentors and people who studied with you as well are in this group. 

PEGGY CODDING: Right, right. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Does this group have a name? 

PEGGY CODDING: Well, now it has a formal name and the formal name is the International Symposium for Research in Music Behavior. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Ah, music behavior. 

PEGGY CODDING: Right. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: I thought that word was going to be therapy for a second. What does that mean? 

PEGGY CODDING: Because it's not all therapy. It's educators, it's musicians, it's performers. It's a group of people who must not only have the music skills, the research skills, the academic skills. It's people who are in relationships and so it's not about, "I have two more publications than you do and these two better journals." It's about who we are as people. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Do you have some former Berklee students who have become a part of this group? 

PEGGY CODDING: Um, no, because we don't have a doctoral program. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Oh right, so you have in some cases-- 

PEGGY CODDING: They're all people who have a doctoral-level degree. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Understood, okay. It's so interesting how you put that, that you were this young buck, I believe you said, who's just pushing, pushing, pushing, and Dr. Madson and others helped you to see the importance of humanity and being a more well-rounded person, I think is kind of what you were saying. That seems like such a big part of what we talk about with the students here at Berklee because young musicians come here, and they are also single-mindedly pushing, pushing, pushing forward to some particular goal in music, and there is this other piece that everyone has to learn when they're young. So I'm wondering how you do that--I know we just sort of jumped ahead a little bit--how do you help a young person learn what you learned at that time, and see that it's about more than just pushing and striving, and about more of your overall impact as a human while you're here? 

PEGGY CODDING: That's such a hard question and yet I think some part of that is easy. The helping it to happen I think is hard, because in some way the person has to be receptive. I mean, it certainly would not have happened with me if I had not been ready in some way, if I had not been receptive in some way. So I think first of all, in education there has to be a safe environment, but as Berklee talks about a safe environment, which we do all the time, it doesn't mean safe as in [pauses] not pushing, not bringing that person to a place of critical thinking, not presenting new ideas that are somewhat uncomfortable. It's safety but also with pushing towards brave thinking, you know. It's a balance between "You are safe here"--- and this is a word we use too often, I don't like the word but I'm using it here because we don't really have time, you and I to discuss what that means--it means safe in that you and I have a relationship that, we don't even have to say the word, we just develop this relationship that has meaning. "You're not assigned to me, I am your mentor." That doesn't work for most people, it doesn't work. There is a mentorship that occurs in relationship, in an intimacy that is safe. Where boundaries are set and understood. And they move, because relationships move. 

And then education happens within that where there are boundaries pushed. I needed my boundaries pushed as I was ready for them in my doctoral program. And those boundaries included my academic learning, and they also included who I was and what I was ready for. One of my assignments was--and I hated this assignment--with my major professor was to tell him my life story. I couldn't even remember it because I had so much trauma. No one had ever asked me. I could remember it, but I couldn't remember all of it, and I couldn't put it in sequence. Because a person who has had trauma can never sequence. So my sharing with my professor was, "That's not possible for a person who has had been in that much trauma to sequence, so I would suggest maybe not asking or expecting that, cause it won't happen and that adds more trauma. And then you're not going to get that--so just accept whatever comes, and then you've given safety and then some will come." My memory came when people said, "Oh this happened, do you remember?" and it's like, oh, now I do. I wouldn't always say that, but now I get it. 

So there is relationship that is the basis for the learning, in safe space with brave thinking and moving forward, such that mentorship can happen. So I say, "What do you want, what is your expectation? What is your solution to this?" And that's hard for educators, as you know being one, because it's hard for us to do that individually. It's hard for us to take and work with a group of people with individual goals and say, "Hey Rob, you're different from this person and that person." So that doesn't always happen and not everyone is ready, as we know. We know that but there are times that it happens, as you know, and we go "Yeah." Because as educators we know it can't always happen, and it doesn't always happen now. We've both had students who come back years later and say "Remember that moment?" and we may not, sometimes we do, and they go, "Remember that moment? That was my moment." We didn't know. That was my moment when I thought about it so much later. So there are opportunities, and sometimes we miss them and sometimes we get them. So relationshipsafety, but that's the wrong word. some sense of reciprocity. I have to give a little. It's the same with therapy. I can't be here [gestures high] and you're here [gestures low], because therapy doesn't happen if I'm here and you're here. It never happens. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So you're saying you have to open yourself up to be vulnerable or what do you mean? 

PEGGY CODDING: You have to be to some. You have to be, with some level of control. We could have that conversation about how much of a friend are you in the classroom? There is [motions high and low] that's another conversation. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Yeah, that's a tricky one. 

PEGGY CODDING: But there are variables that go together in some way, different for you and different for me, but there is some combination that works for you and that works for me and it's going to be a little different. But I think there are some things that we could perhaps agree to. And insight is a big piece of it. And expectations and some sort of goal setting. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Yeah. I feel like I could learn a lot from you if we talked about this further sometime because you're really getting at the essence of education. It's about bringing someone along, meeting them where they are and pushing them the amount they need. Making them feel comfortable or safe or some other word. 

PEGGY CODDING: Sometimes. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So they can take a chance and make a mistake and then keep going. It's all those things and a lot of other things, and you've been at this for a while so I'm sure that you've seen some students do amazing things after they've left your classroom. That must be a gratifying feeling when you hear reports of that or they come back to talk to you. Has there been some of that going on in recent years? Students coming back, staying in touch? 

PEGGY CODDING: I hope we all have those, Rob. I hope we all have those. And then when it doesn't work, it's always, "Okay, what do I need to learn?" And then I sometimes bring those students back when I can if they're receptive and say, "Tell me. Can you talk to me? Can we talk about it?" I hope I can do that, and I did this summer. I said to a student who failed my class, she was going to take the class over. I said, "You know, why don't we just work on it this summer? Why don't we just work on this one thing" And the student, her self confidence--she got an A! She was great, and I learned so much from her, and she was just feeling so good about herself. But it was about her and my learning from her how she processed something that I didn't get, and it's like, "Wow, okay." But the thing about education--the last thing, if I can--the thing about talking about education which I feel so passionate about, is that trying to describe the things that happen, the processes for me, it all sounds so trite. The words that we use sound so trite and when you said those things back to me I said, "Wow it sounds so trite." 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Oh no. [Laughs] 

PEGGY CODDING: Not from you, no no. Not what you said to me but like the concepts, when we write about them, they just sound so trite. We do research in those ways. But you have to have pacing, here's some of the concepts you have to do. If we could just say "Do these five things," it doesn't work that way. Sorry, that's more than you want to know. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: No, that's great. I can't wait to listen back to this and make sure I absorb all of this. 

PEGGY CODDING: I feel like I'm rambling now. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Not at all. Let's go back to the Peg Codding timeline a little bit, cause I know you love the focus being back to yourself in real life. [Looks at camera] Sarcasm. So Florida State was then followed by direct to Ohio University? What was the sequence that brought you to Ohio? 

PEGGY CODDING: I moved around the country a lot. But from there, then it gets slower in my moving. I went to Ohio University to chair a program there that had been an undergraduate program, but they were also looking to have a graduate program in music therapy. I thought I was going there to die. [Laughs] 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Wow. 

PEGGY CODDING: I say that with great love for that program because I had come from a place where so much was happening. You know, how you come to Berklee and there's so much music happening, it's everywhere and you just walk down the halls and you hear everything. You're just fed by everything. At the end of the day you go, "This happened, and this happened, and this happened." And then you leave it, I'm sure as a student with a bachelor's degree, and you go somewhere as your first job or you go set up whatever you're going to do, and you have to do it. You are the person who is responsible for yourself. 

PEGGY CODDING: And you can't call mom and dad and say, "I need this." And if you do, they say, "Well, go do it." And that's where I was. I drove up there in my car and it was rural: southeast Ohio, Athens. They named themselves the center of the universe, right? But it wasn't. It was a big beautiful school that had lots and lots of students. It was a great school, a lot happening there--it wasn't Ohio State. That's where the big school, in terms of the center of the state, bigger, right? It was a big school but a small town, and it was rural, likeland. [gestures] Somebody who lives in Boston cannot even imagine how much land there is in Ohio, southeast Ohio. And there I was. I stood in the middle of this school, it was a big school in a college, within a university. Different from what we have here. And I was like, "Okay." I found a place to live, there was so much to see. It was quiet. I'm a birder so I was like, "Oh, that's pretty cool." I could just listen and I could hear myself think. But there it was, I had to start anew. We didn't have all the clinical programs and the big hospitals right there, so I had to be creative. And it was a great thing for me. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: But the program wasn't.was this the launching of the program? 

PEGGY CODDING: It was the launching of the graduate program, with an undergrad program that was in good shape that needed me to come in and take over. There was somebody there already but they wanted somebody to come in with a PhD to get the graduate program started, and bring people in, and all those kinds of things. And that's what I did. I was right in Appalachia, and you know that was the most beautiful thing. I learned a lot about the people and the music and the way of thinking. And now with the politics that exists and people talking about areas of the country and what's going on and who's thinking what. It was coal country, it was about fifty miles from West Virginia. The music that exists in some parts of that area is the same music that came over from Elizabethan England. The hollers that are there. People don't know what those are; they're little communities that are hidden in the hills. And I had known them when I lived in Tennessee, when I worked with kids who were blind. I would go there when I lived in Tennessee to do assessments with kids who had never been five miles from their home, and families who had not. So I knew those people. My kids were not; they were in a very Democratic town in the middle of a very Republican state. But I knew if I drove a very short way, I would be in those hollers. And I was. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So you would show up with your guitar or a drum or something? 

PEGGY CODDING: So I had to build a clinical program in the area with seniors and kids, knowing the rural philosophies of treatment. And my mentor there, who's still a mentor of mine--we talked yesterday and he works in drug addiction and psychoanalysis--he got me into the prison system when I was there. I'll never forgive him because he just dropped me off and said, "Go forth and do." But he came from that community and is a PhD in every kind of addiction, any form of trauma in that kind of community. And that's where I was, but we were an academic community surrounded by Appalachia. People came from nationally and internationally to that area to study just like they do here, and it was beautiful and wonderful and very hard to leave to come to Berklee. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: I can imagine. 

PEGGY CODDING: And I learned so much and I'm so grateful for that opportunity. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Was it at Ohio where you really started working a lot in the prison system? 

PEGGY CODDING: Yes. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: I mean you just mentioned that. So that's where that all began. From what I understand, that's been a big part of your work ever since. 

PEGGY CODDING: Well, I had worked prior to that with boys, and some girls, who had been in trouble with the law or had been--some due to opportunity. You know, you find the opportunities you have or that you can find. So I set up a program in Michigan with boys who were in the correctional system, usually waiting for trial or waiting for placement, which I loved doing. But I had not been in the prison system until I was approached by Dr. Earl Stump--who is still a colleague, we're working together now on something. He was the head of the Ohio system, parts of it, in Columbus, Ohio, but he was also working in this little town and surrounding areas, as he still does. There was, just prior to me coming there, a riot in the prison system at a place called Chillicothe, Ohio, which was a small town about an hour from where I was, and it had shut down the prison in Chillicothe, the correctional institute there. People were killed, people were--you know, more than I need to talk about. It was a very difficult situation. And there was a consent decree that was a legal decree that there had to be services provided for these inmates, who were in their cells twenty-three-and-a-half hours per day, sometimes for thirty years at a time. All men, medium to max correctional institution. The decree was that there had to be services provided. So somebody had heard about me--don't know if that was good or bad, but in any event. [Laughs] And they said "We want music therapy. We don't know what it is but there's music involved and there's therapy." Turns out it was the grandfather of one of our students, who was a musician, and that was somehow this weird connection who had gotten to my colleague. So I went and talked to the Department of Corrections in Ohio, and they invited me to go and assess the situation. Long story short, with a colleague of mine not working with the university, we put together a program and started a residential treatment unit for severely mentally ill inmates while all of the prison was in turmoil. Trials were going on, all sorts of things from what had happened. They reinstituted the death penalty. It was a lot going on, so we started this program. The officers were not sure who we were, what we were, and they hadn't seen a woman in that system for a long time except for a few women who worked there, and they had been there for many years. So music therapy was an odd thing. For example, they said we could bring guitars in, we just couldn't bring the strings. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Okay. 

PEGGY CODDING: [Laughs] Yeah. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So the strings, you had to string the guitar once you were inside? 

PEGGY CODDING: No, we couldn't bring them at all. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So that kind of defeats the purpose of bringing in a guitar. 

PEGGY CODDING: Yup, there you go. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Okay. 

PEGGY CODDING: But we eventually got a program going and there are many stories. Many funny stories, many poignant stories about that, but by the time we were done, we started three other programs in the state. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: That's great. I've done some volunteer teaching at a prison as well, and I've seen what an impact that has and what you just described. Thirty years in a small room hour after hour, it's hard and it doesn't help people get on the right path. So it's good to have a program like that that existed for them, and I'm sure it's something that still comes up with music therapists these days, that influence is probably there. So let's get you to Berklee then. 

PEGGY CODDING: Please. This is very hard for me to talk this long about myself! [Rob laughs] I'm not good at this! 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Had you ever been to Berklee, did you know much about it before working here in the nineties. 

PEGGY CODDING: When I started playing guitar in junior high, who is it that has those books out? You know who I'm talking about. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Oh yeah, Bill Leavitt. The method for guitar books. 

PEGGY CODDING: Yes, Bill Leavitt. I studied those books in junior high. How old is he now? No, take that out please. I studied out of those books when I was a young punk kid, so that was my first introduction to Berklee. And you know, Berklee is really well known. So I knew about Berklee. One of my colleagues who I think you interviewed, Dr. Suzanne Hanser- 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Well, we interviewed her, it wasn't me personally, but yes. 

PEGGY CODDING: I have known her for many years because we grew up in the same profession, same time. When that position became open, I was still doing my work there, and she came, so I knew when she came and started the program, and I came a few years later, knowing that she was here. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So what was that like to goThe program started in 1996, you came in 1999. So what was the music therapy program like at that time? What was it like to be a part of the program in a larger Berklee at that time? What do you remember? 

PEGGY CODDING: Oh, Berklee was so different. [Both laugh] 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Yeah, how so? 

PEGGY CODDING: Well, one of things--you'll probably cut this but I'll say it anyway--one of the things that was really interesting at that time is that, among the women here, there were more women at the Citadel at that time than in the Berklee community. There were three women senior faculty at that time, I think. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: You mean, on the whole faculty? 

PEGGY CODDING: Yes. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: By senior, you mean? 

PEGGY CODDING: Professors. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Oh, okay. 

PEGGY CODDING: You'll probably cut this, I'll just talk, but you know, equity has been a issue everywhere for a long time, but we had a provost at the time who understood that issue. And because I'm a researcher, I did my homework and brought that forward in terms of salary equity and made my case. And he heard that, and so he spoke to that in terms of my hiring, which was helpful and hurtful-- in the sense that it was helpful because it raised salaries, but it was hurtful because it took some courage for him to do that. And also the fact that there were no women and I had done my homework. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So you had started as a professor at Berklee after this period? 

PEGGY CODDING: Yes. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: By the way, these interviews, we won't cut this because this is-- 

PEGGY CODDING: The history. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: --a part of the college's history. Even though we've made some progress since that time in terms of equity and other issues, we still have many other challenges. So it's important without these being polemical, that we talk about the truth. 

PEGGY CODDING: Well, I appreciate that. It is the history. It's not a flag I wave, but it is a flag. in the context of history, it's an important topic. Berklee began really in one of the bars down here on Newbury street with some wonderful jazz musicians, and prior to that, really, Lawrence Berk giving his son a bar mitzvah present, which was Berklee College of Music. "Son, I'm giving you a college," at thirteen. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Is that right? I've never actually heard that. 

PEGGY CODDING: Yes, so he gave his son-- 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: "Mazel Tov! Here's a music school?" 

PEGGY CODDING: He did, that's the story. It began really with some wonderful musicians giving lessons, and it grew from there into what we have today, which is a phenomenal [pauses] I don't know, it's a phenomenon. That's really what it is, around the world, and it's not perfect, it's not. In the context of time. There were some wonderful women in jazz, as you know, there also have been so many more men of note recorded. You know we can go down and we can speak to the women. But in terms of educators I came in at a time, as did Dr. Hanser, when Berklee was making an academic statement and they wanted some PhDs. And they needed that for accreditation. I mean, yes, we are trained musicians--Susanne is a wonderful pianist and we have done what we do there. I'm not playing now because I got hurt in the way that I did, and I'm sorry for that, that I lost that, I'm glad to be alive. And I lost the music piece of that, in the way I used to play. But it is timely that we came in and we said, "No, if you're going to make this commitment, make it well. Make the statement." And if I am proud of something, and there are many things--pride is not what I walk around speaking of--but I felt good to be strong, to have asked for that. Because if you don't ask, you don't win. And I think it was not only me who won in that situation. I think there were others, and not only women, who won in that situation. And Berklee did step up, and Berklee did hire women. There was not one woman who was a student in the program at that time. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: I'm sorry, no music therapy students? 

PEGGY CODDING: No music therapy students were women at that time. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Wow, okay. 

PEGGY CODDING: Because there were very few women here as students. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: I mean, ten percent or something like that. 

PEGGY CODDING: So it was very small. So when I came and spoke, I spoke to men. And it took years to have women in our program, even though so many music therapists are women. The men we have are phenomenal overall, the people we put out are phenomenal. But it was the time. I mean we're still not where we need to be in many ways, not only women, as you know. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: That's an important story in terms of your impact on Berklee. 

PEGGY CODDING: It's not only mine, by any means. You can go down a long list of people who have contributed, not only women, in so many ways. But right around that time, you know, we were going into a century, Berklee was changing. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: And continues to change. As a teacher for nearly twenty years now here at Berklee, what has been your approach in the classroom? What have you seen--well, I sort of want to back up a second and have you explain a little bit about how music therapy actually works. [Peggy laughs] I haven't actually asked this question. Talk about the transaction of music therapy, a little bit of how that works, and then I want to go from that into how you train music therapists here at Berklee. But give me a little bit of insight on how it actually works. 

PEGGY CODDING: That's really interesting. Usually if we want to get out of that question when people ask at a party, we just say, "Well, I'm a music teacher," because everyone assumes they know what that is. But I would say first of all, when I was a student, people would give us all these definitions of what that is. So to just give you some basic definition that doesn't sound like a textbook, I would just say when we talk about what music therapy is, nobody can define music that I know of. Therapy? Eh, that's a hard one too. And when you put them together, it's a difficult concept. But I would basically say that in some sense music [therapy] is really an application with some basis in the science of music to restore, maintain, or improve quality of life. And that doesn't sound, I hope, too academic. And it's very broad. 

So how does that happen? Well one of the things that we know about it is that we use, as trained therapists, and I've had a lot of that training, is that however we use it--and there are many ways--that it has to be music that you enjoy. So that would be a conversation if we were just sitting together. "What kind of music do you like?" Because that's the music that is most effective is not the word. That is most...hooks you in, pulls you in and brings you to an improved quality of life. What is that? Is it less depression? Is it relief in depression? Is it less isolation? Is it psychologically, because we know the brain changes? One: in musicians, it does. Musicians' brains are different, wow! Over time, is that possible for somebody who just listens to it, or participates in it? It changes the focus of attention. I was in a horrible accident. I was in a coma. And the thing that brought me out of it-- this sounds like some sort of miracle--was a cello, was a cello. I was at the Aspen music festival and so I had wonderful musicians around me. I was in that unit, the one where people go to not come out of. It brought me to focus, I could hear it, I could focus on it. I came out of a coma. It wasn't a miracle, it was just that I could focus. And then I used it to learn to cope with pain because I'm still a pain patient, all these years later. And one of the uses of it for pain patients is as a distraction from pain. 

Now, it doesn't work very well for acute pain. So hopefully I won't go out and break my leg, I'm very clumsy. Because it doesn't work very well for acute pain but for chronic pain, it can serve as a distraction for pain. So your question: how does it work, how do we use it, we use it for many things. Sometimes we use it as a coping mechanism. So what is it that you have to cope with, first we have to figure that out. Is it any of those things I mentioned, or is it something else? Is it an issue with family? Maybe you're a person who--and I don't think this is something you have--but many men don't know how to use words, it's one of the things we do in society. So maybe songwriting is something that we do with you. And it might just be discussing songs that are out there that just, maybe something we're thinking about that might be an issue that you have, and then it moves toward discussing your--you know, it might be a word. It just might be a song on a word. But then it might be songwriting, as our students are very well trained in songwriting. And then it moves more into coping with your issues. And then it might be, wow, let's bring that person who you're having trouble talking to, and maybe they participate through songwriting. And it becomes relational. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So there's music and there's also a talk component. 

PEGGY CODDING: It can be, yes. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: It depends on the client. 

PEGGY CODDING: Right. That's what the goal is. And then we also train for--sounds calculated in a sense--we also train in observation skills and data collection so that--that's the therapist in us. I need to be able to report to other therapists, insurance companies as needed, so that this person is moving from here [gestures] in this assessment to here, [gestures] which is the goal for that person. And why music? Because it is very often peripheral. I don't have to say, which we all participate in, "Rob, what's your problem?" It's like "[scoffs] Why should I tell you? Because you have a degree that says I should trust you?" So it's peripheral. It goes around, gently. Or it can be very focused. It's like I just pull over [moves closer to Rob] and play the drum and before you know it, you're giving me eye contact because it's really hard not to. As you can see, I can be very compelling when I want to be. [Rob chuckles] You can't not look at me cause I can be that person. Or you just look up. So the music can be just, every time you look at me, we play. And then go, "huh." So it's reinforcing if I go that route. There are many different--so the issue with it, last thing, is that there are many approaches to therapy. I can be behavioral, I can be humanist, which are different approaches. Our students study many approaches, we draw from other types of therapy, in addition to the music. We put it together and think, "So what is it that Rob needs?" So you can see how we can study for many many years in order to be effective. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So when students come into the program, how much do they understand about what you just explained? Is it this far apart? [gestures] How do you move from talking about it in theoretical discussions in class to where they're actually in the field? I know there's internships. What's that whole journey like for a music therapy student at Berklee? 

PEGGY CODDING: Oh, hopefully it's exciting. I hope everyone comes to us with their own story. You asked me mine, and I don't know how that went, but you asked me something about my story, and everyone has one. We ask them to write about it. We have an interview to come into the program. And they tell us, "This is where I've been," something about where they've been. What's the music piece of that? "Well, my mom and dad, they wanted me to have music. They didn't really want me to be a musician," or "They did," or "They were musicians, but I had this experience and I can't get rid of it, it's there", or "I saw this person do this and I can't get rid of it, and I want to do more." Well, what is it about this experience that you remember? "I remember the intensity about it." "I remember that this person was here or I was here and now I'm here. "I saw this, I need to know more about it." So there's usually some intensity and meaning of experience that we can build upon. And that's the beauty of it. 

So we're very experiential, we analyze that, we have five different practica so they go out into the community--we have amazing hospitals and schools and centers where we have trained music therapists who teach them. We are so lucky to have them. And the students come back, and I love to look at them when they come back, especially the first day, the first time they go. They come back; sometimes it's exciting, sometimes it's [gasps] And you just say, "That person did not ask to have that disorder, that disease, that challenge," because I don't see it as a disorder, I see it as a challenge. That person didn't ask to have that challenge, how are you going to get in? What do you have? What do you want? How are you going to have that relationship? You've got this amazing thing, you've got music. 

And the thing about music is that most of the world loves music. Most of the world loves music but most of the world sees it as extraneous. But we don't. We know how powerful it is, all of us do. We all do. But as therapists we have seen the most amazing changes. Can I tell you one? 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Please. 

PEGGY CODDING: So I was in the prison, this is a unit of severely mentally ill men who have criminal records so they are isolated from the world. That is their punishment, to be isolated. And there's a unit, it's all metal and cement, and they're all in cells all around here, [gestures] then there's a whole other unit above us. [Gestures] And once you hear the clanging of metal on metal when a cell closes for a big gate, you'll never forget it. I can hear it now. My colleague, who's a phenomenal cellist, comes with me to the prison. And usually I come around with my guitar and go from cell to cell, because people are locked up, like most of the time right? Sometimes they come out, most of the time. So cells up here, down here. So we go around, get a chair, a cello, and me. So I don't know if you know the unaccompanied Bach suites. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Yes. 

PEGGY CODDING: So it's cello, these beautiful suites. It's all unaccompanied, they're classical. They're beautiful. If you've heard Yo-Yo Ma, Janos Starker--go home and listen to them. Amazing. So my colleague has a chair and he sits down. There's a man and he's sitting in the cell, upfront, up by us, wearing paper clothing because he's at suicide risk. Beautiful Black man wearing white paper clothes. He's sitting up front with us so we put the chair back a little so we're not sitting right on him. There's metal between us, but it's open. So I said, "You know, how about a Bach suite?" So my friend, he's a colleague of mine, a cellist by trade, he sits and he plays. Now everything up here is open, so the cellist is going to go up. But it's noisy, you hear this clanging, people are talking, blah blah blah. And my friend Mark begins to play and pretty soon it gets very quiet, which never happens in a prison. It just never happens. It's quiet. And pretty soon this man is sitting there, and you see tears come down, the tears come down. And the whole place is quiet, I've never heard it quiet. And he finishes playing and this man sits there, looks up and he's crying. There's a silence that always happens after a beautiful piece of music and an audience, but it's not an audience. These are severely mentally ill men and up here in a cell, way up high, there's huge ceilings. I hear this man say loudly, "Well that's the second movement, do you know the third?" 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: [laughs] Incredible, oh man. So there was an emotional connection and then somebody's intellect and critical abilities were fired up by it as well. That's incredible. 

PEGGY CODDING: The whole place is quiet. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So, it must be incredible when you have a student come back and report something, anything like that. Does that happen every semester, every once in a while? What do they say? 

PEGGY CODDING: You know, we have a student in the room, so I'd just love to change chairs because she knows, but I think what I would say is thatone of the things I'm taken by is that in the very first clinical practicum, practicum meaning that the student goes into the clinics and the hospitals and so on, is that for the most part, we're used to, especially in this age of technology--you know if it's not on Facebook, it didn't happen. We think that sometimes our young students are not aware because they're just "Okay, everyone put your phones away. No really, put them away." 

But our students come back from that first practicum, and they're really new into the program, and they've just been out for their first actual event where they're with these young children who are in wheelchairs. Many of them don't speak at all. The child might be drooling, and we are not a society that accepts drooling, you know what I'm saying? The child may or may not have eye contact, they might have a switch, meaning that's how they communicate, with their head. We say, "Oh there's not a lot going on." There's so much going on. And the students will do music with a therapist who's their teacher there, and the student will come back and sometimes have a tear or a smile and we'll say "How did it go?" And sometimes you'll see like... [gapes], you know, like the child has so much going on and is so involved and it's not good. And so you see that because it's the first time. 

And then the second time the student will come back and go, "She smiled! She hit her switch and there was laughter!" And so the student sees small change, small change. And that to me is like, "Wow, look what I get to do everyday, look what I get to do." I get to see that. And that never gets old. And it just gets more and more, and it's just like, wow. You can see I'm tearing up, but it's soI don't know. Look what we get to do, Rob. Whatever our thing is that we get to do everyday, we get to come in and do that. And our students give us that. That's not why they're here, they're not here to give us that, and I am very aware of that. It's just that they do. But mostly they see the little things, and they see the changes and they see people who don't ask for difficulty, cope. So what does music do for our clients? In so many ways, it helps them learn to cope and have improved quality of life. What did it do for me? It gave me a voice, it gave me coping skills, it gave me awareness of the beauty that music just is. And I'm so grateful for that. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Wow, beautifully said. We just have time for maybe one or two quick questions, although that would have been a beautiful place to end as well. I'm wondering what you would say in answer to a question about the character of future music therapists. So if somebody is about to graduate from Berklee and your hope for them is that they do well and achieve, what sort of qualities do they need to have? 

PEGGY CODDING: That's a great question. I think they do have, I mean I am very proud of our students. We just graduated, if I may, a wonderful class of graduate students. They were doing projects with an autistic child, who, through music, learned sensory integration and was able to come out of braces and touch the world. A student started a research rehabilitation program and now has developed an assessment that's now going to be used worldwide, and really is, it's already being translated into another language. A student who just did a wonderful project on the Holocaust and historically looked at music in the Holocaust by interviewing--you know, very few people are still living who were in the ghettos and could really talk about that still--and on and on. So what kind of qualities will they have? I think they will have to be--are--inquisitive, international, culturally aware, very much aware of gender fluidity, and very musical. Have a sense of evidence to support the work that they do, very aware and able to talk to people outside of what they do, especially people who are skeptic. They're going to have to be able to write grants and get them and to work on soft money. They have to be able to be in private practice and to work with others, they can't work in a vacuum. And they're going to have to believe in themselves and what they do. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: There's still some skepticism about the work of music therapists? 

PEGGY CODDING: Well, when I was in the dark ages, just before fire, when I practiced, when I began [laughs] I began in Oklahoma. Now no one knows where that is but still, we thought more nationally. Now the students that I work with, including the one in this room, she's on a plane so often. I just met her parents, they were wonderful. She's on a plane, she's in China, you know, today. Our students speak a number of languages, they're going to practice in a number of countries and it's all going to evolve, whatever they're going to do. So it's definitely global, it's global. And we have to think about how we prepare them and then what they do in addition to that. And we have to think about technology and how technology plays into that because it absolutely does. The technology that we have now and that we will have for assessment and also for treatment, just in ten years. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Speaking of technology, I remember this music therapy hack-- 

PEGGY CODDING: Yes! We had a Hack-a-thon. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: A Hack-a-thon a few years ago where therapists were working with technology folks and inventing devices that could help people play with music. 

PEGGY CODDING: Yup, we're doing that. And we did a year with Richard Boulanger, who just blows my mind. I took one of his classes and I sat there, just, my eyes were rolling in the back of my head. And I did C language in part of my dissertation but I'll tell ya, the C language he's using is not the C language I was using. [Both laugh] So that was good for me. Humility is good for us. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: So true. We're two weeks away from the beginning of the fall 2018 semester. 

PEGGY CODDING: We are. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: What are you looking forward to in the semester ahead? What are you teaching? What are your hopes for the future? 

PEGGY CODDING: It's always the same, trying to be a day ahead of them. [Laughs] But no, to be honest, I always want to learn. That sounds a little hokey and obvious, but I have been working on a project with the colleague that I mentioned who works with addictions. We're doing some writing and I hope to bring some of the students in on all of that. I'm hoping to figure out how to do that. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Writing as in a book? 

PEGGY CODDING: Um [pauses] yes. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Sorry, didn't mean to-- 

PEGGY CODDING: No no no, I'm not prepared to talk about it yet--- 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Of course. 

PEGGY CODDING: But I think these are such interesting days. And they are really interesting days for therapists. I'm really aware of that with our students because there's so much going right with the world, but there's so many challenges right now, and trying to prepare these students to be ready for so many new fields, the addiction issues that are happening, that's not new. But the severity of it is. Those kinds of challenges and knowing enough. That's not a good ending, but knowing enough. I guess my answer would be knowing enough, and being able to communicate well, and being able to listen enough and well enough to them is part of my challenge. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: And all of ours. Thank you very much. Anything you want to add before we wrap it up? Anything we didn't cover? 

PEGGY CODDING: This is very difficult for me. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: [Both laugh] It didn't seem so--you mean doing the interview? 

PEGGY CODDING: Yes, I am not good at this, but--- 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: Well thank you for soldiering through. It's really-- 

PEGGY CODDING: I guess what I would say is that I want to thank you so much for inviting me to do this interview and you are such a pleasure as an interviewer. Thank you so much. 

ROB HOCHSCHILD: You are too kind. Thank you so much for doing this. Peg Codding, Professor of Music Therapy. You've done amazing work here all these years so let's keep it going. Appreciate your time today. 

PEGGY CODDING: Thank you.