I am a practitioner of the lively arts and healing arts, a teacher, a scholar, a leader of community arts, an editor, and an archivist.

I teach the The “Old School” Music Workshop, for Songs of the 1920s to 1950s, sharing with younger people the American popular songs of 1900 to 1955, jazz standards, songs from movie and stage musicals, Tin Pan Alley, and the Great American Songbook.

I lead the Lullaby Workshop, in which both adults and children are encouraged to sing to each other, to soothe and comfort in their private family circles. You can find more information about this at the Lullabying for Everyone website.

I teach college and university courses, on so many subjects that there is a whole separate webpage about them. See my “University Teaching” page.

I lead Sing Out, Reach Out programs. These are participatory group singing sessions, usually with older adults or young people — or both together — with everybody lifting each other’s spirits. For this and the following items, too, I draw on my studies of the Diamond Method of psychiatrist-healer Dr. John Diamond.

I do Songs on Wheels, which is a program visiting people who are housebound (or room-bound in a nursing home) and singing together with them one-on-one.

I am a songwriter, creating words or music — or, usually, both. I write songs in the styles of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, Hollywood, and jazz of the 1920s through the mid-1950s.

I help singers and musicians with repertoire, particularly in my area of expertise — American popular songs of the first half of the twentieth century.

I dance as my own personal meditative practice, drawing on my extensive study of dance improvisation and the Diamond Method.

I teach meditative exercise for stress reduction and enhancing Life Energy, drawing on my studies with Dr. John Diamond. One of the most powerful of these exercises is the Diamond-Dart Meridian Sequence, which energizes the acupuncture meridian system.

I lecture and include my own singing, dancing, and performing in the lectures. I lecture both for the general public and for academic groups.

I am an editor, doing proof-reading, document reviewing, and some aspects of structural editing and fact-checking.

I do archiving for specialist archives and not-for-profits. I also work in public library circulation-desk and audio-visual acquisition services.

I conduct oral history interviews about the arts — theatre, film, music, and storytelling. Through this means I help document my central concern: how creativity and the arts are woven into people’s lives. This is entwined with my interest in what is called reception studies or response theory, studying how people use artworks, what the arts mean in their lives. You can find materials arising from this stand of my work at the Arts in Daily Life website.