Use Music to Improve Your Health

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Mood-Boosting Music

Want to feel better? Turn on your tunes. For inspiration, we asked four music experts to share their picks for uplifting music. (The compact discs are available at most music outlets.)

Contemporary
John Tesh, musician and host of the nationally syndicated Intelligence for Your Life: The John Tesh Radio Show, believes music is a form of therapy. “It has an amazing ability to change the way I feel,” he says. He regularly turns to four contemporary works to lift his spirits:

Secret World Live by Peter Gabriel ($15)

Alive in South Africa by Israel Houghton ($15)

ET: The Extra-Terrestrial Soundtrack by John Williams ($11)

Watermark by Enya ($11)

Anything goes
Suzanne Hanser, chair of the Music Therapy Department at Berklee College of Music in Boston and past president of the World Federation of Music Therapy, has eclectic taste in music. “I tend to enjoy any music that’s both uplifting and calming,” she says. Here are three CDs she finds particularly mood-boosting:

Concerto for Guitar and Jazz Piano Trio by Claude Bolling and Alexandre Lagoya ($17)

Native Sense: The New Duets by Gary Burton and Chick Corea ($12)

Going Home by Daniel Kobialka ($16)

Classical
Jesse Levine, trumpeter and music manager for the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston, the oldest continuously performing arts organization in the United States, says music helped him heal after having open-heart surgery in 2003. “My CDs got me through the six weeks after surgery when I couldn’t play my trumpet,” he says. Levine finds classical music most soothing, but uses rock music to keep his sense of humor intact during bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Beethoven: Complete String Quartets by the Guarneri
Quartet ($30)

Brahms: German Requiem by John Elliot Gardner and other artists ($16.99)

All Is Bright by the Handel and Haydn Society ($16)

Hey! Ho! Let’s Go! The Anthology by The Ramones ($28)

World/alternative
“Most of the music my husband and I listen to is uplifting, relaxing, or a combination of the two,” says Bonnie Draina, an instructor of voice and voice pedagogy and musicians’ wellness associate at the University of Colorado at Boulder. These four super-calming albums are among her favorites:

Duality by Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke ($20)

Sun/Moon by Somei Satoh ($14)

Meditate by Peter Davison ($12)

Tibetan Chants by Lama Karta ($13)