The healing power of music
Shannon LeClair – Times Reporter
One man has such a strong belief in music creating miracles that he has been doing a bike tour to raise awareness to his cause. His name is Charles Lage, he currently lives in Winnipeg and at 53 he has been a piano technician for 34 years.
Lage is an autism survivor and is cycling across Canada to raise money for his charity, A Joyful Noise School of Music. “I have found personally and scientifically that music creates miracles in the lives of the challenged,” said Lage. “Over the last number of years, I have given away hundreds of pianos and in order to continue this, giving and offering music for therapeutic purposes, is in scattered places and we’d like to bring this under one roof.”
Lage’s main objective is to create a national centre in central Canada where the best course of action can be determined as to how to help people with disabilities. He would also like to have a neurological researcher and teachers qualified in social and cognitive skills, reading and comprehension and using music as therapy and a type of catalyst for learning. Lage would like to have the centre in Winnipeg “so everyone would have the same distance to go.”
He also said everyone interested would go to the centre for a non-medical assessment to see what method to take with each individual.
“I teach challenged people to do piano restorative work but we’d also like to find employment for Autistics and other challenged individuals,” said Lage. He has a three-part goal he wants to accomplish to try to bring his dream to life. The first part is to raise awareness to the issues the challenged face. He would like to raise funds online for the Institution of the National Centre for Music and Classroom Therapy to be able to focus on the micro level of therapy.
“I also plan to speak to our politicians about passing the Arts Tax Credit sooner rather than later, so that millions of challenged children and adults can have relief from the high cost of therapy. Not to mention those that passed over music therapy or music for therapeutic purposes (music lessons) because of cost,” said Lage.
He would like to see costs under $1,000, so everyone will be able to afford to learn and grow through music. On July 19 Lage had a rare meeting on Parliament Hill discussing the tax credit and he won. The tax credit will be put into place sooner for the kids and it is still in discussion for adults.
According to Lage, other groups focus on the macro level, but it is the micro skills which accelerate at a marvelous rate when in conjunction with the macro therapy in maintenance of Autism, heart attacks, or strokes. “But we can’t do any of this without help completing the forms necessary to gain government grants and who knows the ins and outs of granting so the poor can afford therapy,” said Lage. Why is he doing this? Because, he said in the past 10 years there has been scientific proof about the power of music in life and success.
His challenge to fellow Canadians is, ‘are you up to helping those who can’t help themselves?’
For more information and/or to help his charity go to www.ajns.net