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| To Whom it May Concern:
I am a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, specializing in diseases of the blood. I am also a keen amateur pianist and study at the School of Continuing Education at the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC). For the last 4 years I have been a member of the Board of Overseers of the NEC. This summer, I spent a remarkable two weeks at the Taubman Piano Institute during their annual summer piano festival at Williams College. I was energized by this experience for two reasons. Because of my other life as an amateur pianist, I am eager for opportunities to learn and improve my playing. More importantly, my responsibilities as chair of the NEC medical liaison committee have whetted my interest in the medical issues facing pianists and other instrumentalists who are beset with so-called repetitive use injuries. Approximately one hundred fifty people attended the two-week workshop, many of them young students who are preparing for performance careers. In addition, about half of the registrants were piano teachers or individuals who make their living from music in one way of (sic) another. An impressive number of them are affiliated with music conservatories and music departments in colleges and universities. A substantial minority of these individuals had either sustained serious injury in the past or are indeed currently unable to play because of repetitive use injuries. The clinical manifestations of these injuries varied but included tendinitis, focal dystonias and carpel tunnel syndrome. As part of the experience there I attended three meetings of a support group which consisted of a subset of individuals who are currently injured and derived benefit from discussing their problems with a group of like-minded individuals. Altogether I talked to many individuals who had incapacitating use injuries and had not received any benefit from consultations with neurologists, orthopedic surgeons, physical therapists and those dealing in alternative approaches such as acupuncture. It is remarkable how many of these individuals had crushingly disappointing experiences with medical and para-medical specialists of various types but were cured of their injuries once they were trained in the Taubman technique. In some cases the responses were very rapid. In others a prolonged period of time was needed. It is hard to assess the failure rate, but the fact that about two-thirds of the people who attend the Taubman Institute every summer are repeat visitors is a testimony to the efficacy of the program and the need to maintain the technique with full fidelity and compliance in order for the pianist to remain healthy and able to play. The underpinnings of the Taubman technique rest on remarkably simple but, to my mind, highly sound and rational applications of a thorough understanding of anatomy and neuromuscular physiology. Mrs. Taubman, with the remarkably able input of Edna Golandsky, has developed principles based on maximizing physiologically sound arm and hand position with a technical approach based on forearm rotation and arm movements that takes advantage of muscle tension. Any tension, even minimal, is incoordinate and causes fatigue which may progress to injury. These principles seem so simple and yet building a piano technique on them is, of course, a marriage between science and art, one that Mrs. Taubman and Edna Golandsky have mastered in a very impressive way. Even so-called “musical qualities” such as tone production, dynamics, shaping phrase lines are not left up to “inspiration” or “genius”, but are governed by specific principles of physical motion and timing. Given the high frequency and dire impact of use injury among pianists, the Taubman techniques should be of benefit to the huge number of piano students and established pianists who at this point lack access to this program. Furthermore it seems eminently logical that the principles on which the Taubman technique is based could be readily applied to the training of other instrumentalists in the interests of tension-free technique and prevention of use injuries. To this end, one of the Taubman faculty members, Audrey Schneider, is assembling a weekend meeting of physicians from Europe prior to the Taubman’s Institute next summer festival at Williamstown (July 6-8, 2001). This group will be a delegation from the European Congress of Arts Medicine (ECAM), founded by Dr. Albert Lahme, orthopedist and excellent amateur violinist, who invited Ms. Schneider to speak to ECAM about the Taubman work in Munich, 1994 and in Berlin, 1998. I am planning on attending this meeting and am endeavoring to solicit the interests of physicians here in Boston who have experience and expertise in treating and preventing use injuries among pianists and other instrumentalists. I am also hopeful that the program could be extended to institutes involved in the training of musicians such as the New England Conservatory. With best wishes, Sincerely, H. Franklin Bunn H. Franklin Bunn, MD
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