background

I was born in New York City in 1961, and grew up in New Jersey in a stereotypical, Italo-American family. They were all crazy, so I spent most of my time playing the guitar, writing poetry, and figuring out how to leave New Jersey. College provided the leverage. Oddly, I gave up music and the Arts as soon as I got to college and, rather out of the blue, decided to major in Biology and become a doctor. I transferred to Brown University, spent my junior year abroad in Austria, roamed around Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union for a few months -- it was 1984 -- and completed a BA in Human Biology, pre-Med, in 1986.
At this point, I decided to postpone going to medical school, and got swept back into music. I began performing with a number of folk, jazz, and early music groups, teaching music on the side, and moved to Germany in 1990 to pursue further performance opportunities. From 1990 to 1993 I made my living as a touring musician with several European early music ensembles. In 1993, I co-founded ZORGINA early music ensemble, a women’s vocal trio specializing in medieval polyphony and based dually in Vienna and Providence. We toured and recorded together until 2006.
When I got tired of the itinerant life, I started a graduate program at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA in order to teach voice at a university level, and completed an MMus in vocal performance in 2004. I joined the voice faculty at Rhode Island College shortly thereafter.
Lives tend to unfold in circular fashion, and mine has certainly been no exception. As I began to teach singing in earnest, I was more and more confronted with, and compelled by, the larger struggles of human embodiment that my students brought to their voice lessons. The voice is the sonic expression of our psyches, and carries with it our struggles, hopes, joys, fears, and longings. In singing, the relationship with the voice mirrors the relationship with self; emotional blocks manifest as vocal blocks. As I worked with this material – which, more and more, had less and less to do with music – my voice teaching became focused on my students' relationships with their bodies, and by extension, their relationship with self. The path towards a healing profession that I had begun, and abandoned, 20 years earlier reemerged into view.
As this transition was unfolding, an acupuncturist friend asked me to help her run a community acupuncture clinic that she was opening. I worked with her for two years, acting as patient liaison and counselor to people who were often in pain and were almost always in distress. My work at this clinic, with this dear friend, further renewed my interest in medicine, which I was now considering from a much wider, and less allopathic, vantage point. I began to study and practice a form of bodywork known as craniosacral therapy, a combination of hands-on manipulation and therapeutic dialoguing. Shortly thereafter, I enrolled in a Master’s program in Holistic Counseling at Salve Regina. I completed my second MA in 2010, and concluded my studies with a counseling internship in gynecological oncology.
I currently work as a therapist in a mental health center in Fall River, MA, and am part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences faculty at Brown University Medical School, teaching medical students the human side of medicine. I have a small private practice, and recently began leading an eating disorders group in Providence, RI. I hope to eventually specialize in working with chronic and acute medical conditions. Its a whole, new life.
My personal history has by no means been without struggle. I have had first-hand experience with mental illness, trauma, addiction, and recovery, and these experiences have proven to be a tremendous resource for me. I am my own testimony to the capacity for growth and health inherent in each person, and this is a gift that I am honored to share.
At this point, I decided to postpone going to medical school, and got swept back into music. I began performing with a number of folk, jazz, and early music groups, teaching music on the side, and moved to Germany in 1990 to pursue further performance opportunities. From 1990 to 1993 I made my living as a touring musician with several European early music ensembles. In 1993, I co-founded ZORGINA early music ensemble, a women’s vocal trio specializing in medieval polyphony and based dually in Vienna and Providence. We toured and recorded together until 2006.
When I got tired of the itinerant life, I started a graduate program at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA in order to teach voice at a university level, and completed an MMus in vocal performance in 2004. I joined the voice faculty at Rhode Island College shortly thereafter.
Lives tend to unfold in circular fashion, and mine has certainly been no exception. As I began to teach singing in earnest, I was more and more confronted with, and compelled by, the larger struggles of human embodiment that my students brought to their voice lessons. The voice is the sonic expression of our psyches, and carries with it our struggles, hopes, joys, fears, and longings. In singing, the relationship with the voice mirrors the relationship with self; emotional blocks manifest as vocal blocks. As I worked with this material – which, more and more, had less and less to do with music – my voice teaching became focused on my students' relationships with their bodies, and by extension, their relationship with self. The path towards a healing profession that I had begun, and abandoned, 20 years earlier reemerged into view.
As this transition was unfolding, an acupuncturist friend asked me to help her run a community acupuncture clinic that she was opening. I worked with her for two years, acting as patient liaison and counselor to people who were often in pain and were almost always in distress. My work at this clinic, with this dear friend, further renewed my interest in medicine, which I was now considering from a much wider, and less allopathic, vantage point. I began to study and practice a form of bodywork known as craniosacral therapy, a combination of hands-on manipulation and therapeutic dialoguing. Shortly thereafter, I enrolled in a Master’s program in Holistic Counseling at Salve Regina. I completed my second MA in 2010, and concluded my studies with a counseling internship in gynecological oncology.
I currently work as a therapist in a mental health center in Fall River, MA, and am part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences faculty at Brown University Medical School, teaching medical students the human side of medicine. I have a small private practice, and recently began leading an eating disorders group in Providence, RI. I hope to eventually specialize in working with chronic and acute medical conditions. Its a whole, new life.
My personal history has by no means been without struggle. I have had first-hand experience with mental illness, trauma, addiction, and recovery, and these experiences have proven to be a tremendous resource for me. I am my own testimony to the capacity for growth and health inherent in each person, and this is a gift that I am honored to share.