The mission of the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine is to provide musicians and performing artists with health services tailored to their unique needs. These services include state-of-the-art techniques related to music psychotherapy and healing. The Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine provides special services to several unique populations and is supported by a generous gift from the David B. Kriser Foundation and through the estate of John H. Slade, directed to Beth Israel from hospital Trustee Richard Netter with additional support from the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation. Musicians and performing artists may receive low-cost medical treatment in conjunction with select, specialized music therapy services.

The medical director of the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine, Dr. Stephan Quentzel, specializes in integrative medicine and psychiatry, blending a medical-bio-music approach to address the unique ailments specific to performing artists and musicians. The Center's interdisciplinary team of medical professionals and music therapists provide traditional medicine with complementary mind-body approaches.

Our music therapy team is trained in specialized techniques to address specific cognitive psycho-motivational aspects of depression, chemical dependency, chronic fatigue, and anxiety. Our team members are Licensed, Board-Certified therapists who use complementary approaches as well, such as music-assisted relaxation, guided visualization, and stress management to address the physical symptoms of overuse injuries to alleviate pain.

At The Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine, our goal is to use music in a therapeutic context to provide musicians and performing artists with an empowering, dynamic healing environment that is easily accessible.

Our Services

We offer a wide variety of services for the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine. Some of these resources include:

• 45-minute music therapy assessment by Dr. Joanne Loewy, DA, MT-BC 
  Full music history, music psychotherapy evaluation. Performance history, music treatment modalities assessed
• 60-minute office consultation by Dr. Stephan Quentzel, MD
  Comprehensive history & physical; review & evaluation of chief complaint; treatment modalities reviewed
• Follow-up medical treatment sessions include referrals to our team of consulting physicians covering a wide range of specialties including neurology, acupuncture, spinal cord conditions, pulmonology, pain medicine & palliative care, neuromuscular and electromyography neurology, rehabilitation, and internal medicine.
• Follow-up Music Services include exceptional treatments by our team of consulting music therapists. Services include:
  • Clinical Music Improvisation: Creating spontaneous live music for oneself or with a music therapist on an instrument that is either familiar or unknown can provide a spontaneous forum that uncovers intra-psychic tendencies. Clinical improvisation may give insight to the unconscious issues related to the non-musical self, and the relationship tendencies that are often encapsulated by the role one tends to assign to the music 
  • Music and Breath Entrainment: Tension, fatigue and fear tend to cause physical constriction and emotional contraction in the body and mind. Music, within its capacity to create flow and in its ability to enhance a feeling of space through the extension of open phrasing, can ease the fear and constraints of breathing. Wind-playing provides a viable means whereby the breath can be consciously connected to intention. Elongation of musical phrases through melodic and harmonic entrainment can extend and increase the volume and capacity to breathe, enhancing homeostasis   
  • Music Ergonomic-Posturing: Analyses of the playing, positioning, and environment that one uses in music (whether solo or with a group). Adjusting and/or altering the way we play music and the musical environment in which one plays may assist in the avoidance of overuse that contributes to repetitive strain injury. Music holds inherent systems of order which may provide a means for compatible enhancement in both the strengths and limitations of physical and emotional strains of the musician 
  • Music Psychotherapy: Using music and the context of a musical relationship can provide opportunity for self-growth and insight. Analyzing and making conscious one's relationship with music, musical others and the subtle referential role that music and the musician tend to play in everyday living can be life-changing    
  • Music Visualization: The use of live or recorded music particularly catered to create an induced, relaxed mind and body can alter one's perception of tension and evoke the potential of useful inner resources
  • Rhythmic Release: Repetitive rhythms, drumming, triplet metered holding in both structured and non-structured musical motifs, may provide a physical/emotional/spiritual sense of tension release. 
  • Tonal Intervallic Synthesis: Tones and sounds in the implementation of specific intervals have the capacity to sense dissonance and create consonance 
  • Vibration: Vibratory instruments, such as the gong, tone bars, and the use of toning, can alter the perception of pain and/or anxiety
• Music Group (select and open/monthly): Music groups will be offered at the Music Health Clinic to serve various needs. Groups include:
  • Drumming
  • Music visualization
  • Toning
  • Wind-playing/Breath expansion