Between mass panic and musicians' medicine
Germany once honored him for his care of the victims of the Duisburg Love Parade. Today he teaches the basics of healthy music-making in Cologne. Peer Abilgaard will be performing at the National Music Health Day in Lucerne on November 9.
Peer Abilgaard studied voice and trumpet at the Cologne University of Music and Dance and was a guest soloist as a countertenor at the Staatstheater Darmstadt and in the opera houses in Halle, Gera, Altenburg and Bonn. After studying music, he went on to study medicine at the University of Bonn. Today he is head physician at the Clinic for Mental Health at the Evangelical Hospital in Gelsenkirchen and an examiner for various German medical associations.
In 2009, he founded the Peter Ostwald Institute for Musicians' Health at the Cologne University of Music. He also founded the "Netzwerk Musikermedizin Nordrhein", a loose association of therapists and doctors from a wide range of disciplines. As a founding member of the "German Society for Music Physiology and Musicians' Medicine", he has been involved in the interface between performing arts, music education and medicine for many years. Together with his colleagues, he pursues a resource-oriented further development of the still young discipline within the specialist society.
As an author, Abilaard deals with resilience and dignity-oriented approaches in psychotherapy, the importance of non-verbal psychotherapy and an ego-strengthening music education.
More about the National Health Day Music: swissmedmusica.ch/healthday
