|
Home
About Us
Reports
Events
Discussions
Resources
Members
Search
| | Children with NLD
(nonverbal learning disorders), Asperger's Syndrome, and autism may have musical or other strengths that
don't show up in diagnostic testing. This site seeks to assist those interested in
developing children's potentials
through music, chess, and math, and then identifying occupations related to these strengths.
Our Goals
To encourage parents, educators, and psychologists to expose affected children early
to music, chess, and math:
1) To encourage formation of camps, therapies, and pedagogies to help children with NLD, autistic, or other profiles
respond to music, chess, and
math and then bridge those strengths to other areas of life
2) To provide helpful tools for educators, home schoolers) therapists,
counselors, parents, and kids
3) To encourage empirical investigation of a possible connection between NLD and autism and higher-than-average musical ability
To assist in career directions and transitions:
1) To encourage early
testing
of music and chess aptitude to avoid missing these strengths and to find
appropriate educational and occupational outlets
2) To minimize the anxieties of transitioning from student life to adulthood
3) To provide encouraging personal histories of successes
To participate or for more info, please email: theguide3Z@dejazzd.com
(delete the Z)
What's New!
Latest resources, reports, or success
stories are posted here, with links for more info:
04-11-04
 | An exciting resource--Music Therapy: An Art Beyond
Words, by Leslie Bunt--will be reviewed immediately upon arrival. Leslie
Bunt is an international authority on music therapy at the University of
Bristol (UK). He is author of numerous articles on the topic, and of the
highly-acclaimed book Music
Therapy: An Art Beyond Words (Routledge, 1994), which has been translated
into German, Japanese and Italian. Current research includes work on
children within the autistic spectrum and those with cerebral palsy, together with work
in the general field of palliative care. He is Director of the 'Musicspace'
Therapy Centre in Bristol and runs the part-time postgraduate Diploma in Music
Therapy. Describes the role of music therapy in adults and children, with
intriguing examples of benefits to speech and behavior. Includes autistic
profiles, but not specific to NLD. |
11-17-03
|
Autism and music: Christopher Porterfield, "Debut of an Odd
Couple," Time Magazine, page 137 excerpt:
When he was setting the Parisian music world abuzz with his precocious piano
playing the 1840s, the young Camille Saint-Saens was taken to play for the
great Hector Berlioz. Saint-Saens, with an aplomb beyond his years, dashed
off a dazzling keyboard display. "All he lacks," announced Belioz,
"is inexperience."
Aficionados had much the same reaction to two sophisticated young pianists
who made New York City debuts last week. One was jazzman Matt Savage, who
led his trio through a swinging, bop-tinged evening at Manhattan's Blue
Note. His sets ranged from the standard My Favorite Things to
originals like Groovin' on Mount Everest. He traced melodies simply,
sometimes decorating them with trills, and shifted between softly gliding
passages and furious fantasias with his arms whipping up and down the
keyboard, using even his fits to bang out a climactic chord. 'Scary,'
marveled jazz pianist D.D. Jackson, who was in the Blue Note audience. So it
was, especially for a performer who was up well past his bedtime and who
could barely reach the pedals with his favorite blue sneakers. Savage is 11
years old.
His age and size, however, are the least of his challenges. As a 3-year-old
in Sudbury, Mass., Savage was diagnosed as autistic. He had odd obsessions
(license plates, for one), was terrified of loud noises and wouldn't play
with other childeren. His mother, who manages his career, and father feel
that since starting piano lessons at 6 and teaching himself jazz, he has
made huge strides emotionally. Since 1998, he has played more than 50
concerts and released five CDs. Today his busy, multi-track mind teems with
advanced knowledge of everything from geography and math to sports
statistics. "Autism," he says, "is like a huge wall, and if
you reach the top of it, you're on your way...
--Reported by Jeremy Caplan and Jiexuan Zhang/New York
|
|
12-11-03
(Matt Savage
is a 12-year-old jazz phenomenon. He’s also a perseverative hyperlexic with pervasive
developmental disorder:)
Autistic savants are born with miswired neurons - and extraordinary
gifts. The breakthrough science behind our new understanding of the
brain.
Matt Savage launched his jazz career by attempting to
improve a Schubert sonata. His piano teacher told him that the G-sharp he just
played was supposed to be a G-natural. "It sounds better my way," he protested.
She replied that only when he wrote his own music could he take liberties with a
score. Keen on taking liberties, he became a jazz composer. He released his
fifth album this year, making guest appearances on the Today show,
20/20, and NPR. Recently, his trio booked two shows at the Blue
Note in New York City.
Matt
is a musical savant. The term savant dates from the late 19th century, when a
small number of people in European asylums classified as feebleminded "idiots"
were discovered to have extraordinary, even uncanny skills. One had memorized
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire after reading it a single
time. Others were able to multiply long columns of numbers instantly and factor
cube roots in seconds, though they could barely speak.
When
Matt was 3, he was diagnosed with a form of autism called pervasive
developmental disorder. Autism and savant syndrome overlap, but they are not the
same thing. Nine out of ten autistic people have no savant abilities, and many
savants suffer from some form of neurological impairment other than autism.
Savant syndrome itself is rare. The rarest of the rare is the prodigious savant,
like Rain Man's Raymond Babbitt, who could memorize phone books,
count 246 toothpicks at a glance, and trump the house in Vegas. Darold Treffert,
the leading researcher in the study of savant syndrome, estimates that Matt is
one of fewer than 50 prodigious savants alive today....
By
studying the minds of people like Matt, neuroscientists are discovering that
savants are more like the rest of us than the medical world once believed. We're
learning that the extraordinary skills of savants tap into areas of the mind
that function like supercomputers, compiling massive amounts of data from the
senses to create a working model of the world. The traditional conception of the
brain - two hemispheres that are hardwired from birth - is yielding to an
understanding of the ways the regions of the cortex learn to function together
as a network.
"We
used to have this idea that we were born with a magnificent piece of hardware in
our heads and a blank disk called memory," says Treffert. "Now we have to
acknowledge that the disk comes with software, that we were wrong in many of our
assumptions about intelligence, and that the brain is much more capable of
healing itself than we thought. By finding out how savants work, we learn how we
work." ...
For PDF of this article |
|
Matt Savage's website:
www.savagerecords.com |
|
| |