The Lady In Number 6

The filmmaker and producers of the film “The Lady in Number 6” contacted me this week,  and asked me to write an article about this Academy Award-qualifying documentary.

“The Lady in Number 6” is one of the most uplifting and inspirational films of the year. It was written by Oscar-winning filmmaker Malcolm Clarke and produced by Nick Reed, an international film producer.

So this week I have the great honor to write to you about this wonderful film and hope that you will be uplifted, inspired and comforted by Alice’s story.

This film is about Alice Herz Sommer, the world’s oldest pianist and Holocaust survivor. To see the trailer, go here: http://bit.ly/1bbAfnV

 Before the second World War, Alice was a well known concert pianist performing throughout Europe. But when Hitler declared war on the world, all of Europe collapsed and witnessed many years of unspeakable pain and suffering. Alice’s concert career and life as she knew it was over. Both her beloved husband and mom were deported to Auschwitz and gassed to death, and Alice and her six-year-old son, Raphael, were imprisoned in Theresienstadt concentration camp , where her most painful memories are of her helplessness and inability to feed her child or to answer his many questions about why they and so many others were being subjected to the indescribable nightmare of the Holocaust.

Despite her desperate circumstances, Alice found a way to look beyond the horrors of the concentration camp, and tried to find joy and strength. She found joy, happiness and strength through her music. Music preserved her sanity and her life. She loves speaking of playing more than 100 concerts inside the concentration camp, because it brought hope to the countless prisoners.

Alice says:”Music is beautiful. Life is beautiful. Beethoven, Bach, Brahms gave us a miracle, they gave us their music. One of the greatest philosophers said that music is on the first place of art. It brings us in another world, an island of peace, beauty and love. It helps us to have HOPE. Music is God.”

 “Kids all over the world grow up on superheroes, what we, their parents, must remind them, is documentaries tell stories about ‘real superheroes.’ Superheroes are based on great people, real people, like Alice Herz Sommer.” – Nicholas Reed, Producer

For more information and to see the Trailer of this film, go to:

http://nickreedent.com

Music Transforms You,

Daniela

The Secret of Cymatics, Sound Made Visible

When You Play Piano, You Are Surrounded By Sheer Beauty

Cymatics: the word comes from Greek “kuma” and means “wave.” It is the study of sound and vibration made visible on the surface of a plate, diaphragm or membrane. It was named by the Swiss medical doctor, Hans Jenny, who was a pioneer in this field.

Our children with special needs are dealing with a lot of inner chaos and have a harder time making sense of the chaotic world we live in. But there is hope and help: music and rhythm create order out of chaos. So when we get our special needs children actively involved in music-making, we are assuring an inner beauty and peace for them, which no other modality can bring or guarantee.

Go to my website and watch the following video on TED Talks, you will be blown away:

http://danielaclapp.com/piano/the-secret-of-cymatics/

Just think of what music can do for your child’s brain, how it can bring about healing, inner peace and order?! From such a place of inner peace and beauty automatically flow better self-esteem, better thinking skills, higher brain-function, better health, a more productive and successful life.

Isn’t that what we all ultimately want for our children and for ourselves?

Classical music is the only modality known to mankind that can bring such magic and has the miraculous power to transform you.

Watch the following video:

http://danielaclapp.com/piano/the-secret-of-cymatics

Baby Born with Two Heads

Their mother welcomed them with open arms and named them Jesus and Emmanuel. Emmanuel means “God with us.”  But is God really with us when bad or abnormal situations  happen? Our primal instinct may call those babies “freaks” or “other” and wants to eliminate or avoid them.

“Other” will be different for each of us. For the military general, it might be the granola-eating peace-loving hippy. For the University Professor it might be the lumberjack. For many it might be someone with Down syndrome or special needs.

We lock our doors and turn the other way. Yet as a Christian I see Jesus’ radical preference for rejected outsiders, which infuriated the religious leaders.

To embrace someone that is different from us, you have to get out of your comfort zone, walk towards that person and trust that “God is with us.”

Bearing Fruit in Season

My parents have a big, beautiful garden where they grow every vegetable and fruit that grows in Germany. We also have apple trees that bear the most delicious, sweet, juicy apples you will ever taste. Every autumn the apples are ready for harvest, and when I look at our apple-trees during that time, I am struck by the sheer abundance that is almost a wasteful amount of apples. Apples on the ground, apples hanging from the branches, apples everywhere. But soon these trees will be bare, entering their dormant stage. They will enter a season of waiting in which they do not bear any fruit.  At least they are not bearing any visible fruit, and the waiting for more apples looks barren when it is actually the preparation for abundance.

Even the Bible talks about bearing fruit in season. “There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven.”  ~ Ecclesiastes 1:3

In years long gone by, the only way to do things was in rhythm with nature, observing and respecting its laws. We could only eat fresh berries and tomatoes in the summer, apples in the autumn, canned and stored foods in the winter, and the little snowdrop flowers were the first messengers that spring is arriving.

Little Snowdrop flower

Now we live in a culture, where fruits and everything else we can think of are available all the time. We don’t have to observe the natural rhythm of sowing and harvest, of night and day, of rest and work. We can produce everything artificially and instantly. And that is where trouble begins: we ignore our own physical limitations, and the limitations of each season of our life. We demand and we expect “fresh fruit” at the snap of our fingers.

But learning to play the piano brings us back to those natural rhythms of life itself; it is a cycle of sowing, which is the daily practicing, then waiting, which is more practicing, then harvesting fruits, which is the playing in recitals or just having mastered a concept or a piece, and then the barren waiting again.

If you focus too much on the barren ground in the winter, then you will miss the abundance that is all around you all year long.

Music Transforms You

Cymatics…what is that?

And What It Has To Do with Your Child’s Health, Brain and Success

Cymatics: the word comes from Greek “kuma” and means “wave.” It is the study of sound and vibration made visible on the surface of a plate, diaphragm or membrane. It was named by the Swiss medical doctor, Hans Jenny, who was a pioneer in this field.

Ernst Chladni (1756-1827), a German musician and scientist, sometimes known as ‘the father of acoustics, used a brass plate, put a bunch of sand on it and moved a violin bow along the sides of the plate.  He found that geometric patterns could be created, depending on where and what speed on the edge of the plate the bow was drawn.

Just take a look at the beautiful patterns and order that sound/music can create out of randomly strewn salt-grains, which represent the chaos in our world.

Everything that is beautiful has order to it. Just look at nature: the flowers, the constellation of the planets. Our children with special needs are dealing with a lot of inner chaos and have a harder time making sense of the chaotic world we live in. But there is hope and help: music and rhythm create order out of chaos. So when we get our special needs children actively involved in music-making, we are assuring an inner beauty and peace for them, which no other modality can bring or guarantee.

Are you ready for this? This is amazing! Are you sitting down? Do you have your seat belt on? Here are piano-notes made visible:

If piano playing can create such beautiful shapes, just think of what it can do for your child’s brain, healing, inner peace and order?! From such a place of inner peace and beauty automatically flow better self-esteem, better thinking skills, higher brain-function, better health, a more productive and successful life.

Isn’t that what we all ultimately want for our children and for ourselves?

Classical music is the only modality known to mankind that can bring such magic and has the miraculous power to transform you.

Music Transforms You

Daniela Clapp

http://danielaclapp.com

 

Can Birds Fly?

My little daughter Christina who has Down syndrome was playing in the backyard today with her younger sister Maria.

Christina and Maria

Suddenly the girls came running in, telling me “Mom, a little green bird is stuck in the tree and cannot fly anymore.” So I went outside to look at this bird. Indeed, there was a very pretty little green bird stuck between the dividing trunk of one of our Mesquite trees. I picked up this bird, took it inside the house and offered the exhausted little thing some water, which it drank eagerly. I found an extra shoe-box, laid some paper-towels inside and carefully placed the bird inside this box. The girls stayed with the bird while I started to make some phone calls, trying to figure out how to help this little creature.

A few hours later the bird died mysteriously, and Christina and Maria were so sad. In order to divert their attention, I asked Maria to continue with her homeschooling writing exercises, and I took Christina to the piano

Christina playing the piano

for her daily piano practice. After playing a couple of her favorite songs, I tried to reinforce the concept of Low and High on the keyboard. To illustrate this and get her to understand this concept, I asked her a bunch of questions like: can cats fly High in the air or are they Low on the ground? Of course her response was “no, cats don’t fly, they are Low on the ground.” Then I asked:”Can ducks fly High Up?” Yes. “Can chickens fly High Up? Yes. “Can birds fly High Up?” Christina’s response was:”No mom, the bird is dead and cannot fly, poor birdie.”…..her answer startled me a little, and I thought to myself ‘What a precious and caring and truthful answer she had.” That is how our kids with Down syndrome are: very caring and loving, always concerned for the well-being of others.

I finished Christina’s piano lesson

Me teaching Christina piano

with her new favorite tune “Little Train” where at the end she gets to blow into a wooden whistle that sound just like a real train. I am amazed how fast and well she is learning all those little piano tunes. It just goes to show, kids with Down syndrome CAN learn to play the piano!!!

Music Transforms You,

Daniela Clapp