Melissa Brotons will speak on music therapy

VANCOUVER — The wife of the maestro of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is pitching in to help the group make it to the end of the season.

Melissa Brotons, Ph.D., will speak on “Music for Health and Education” in a fundraising lecture that will benefit the symphony and local music education programs. The Vancouver Symphony, led by conductor Salvator Brotons, has canceled some recent events due to a shrinking budget.

Melissa Brotons is a professor, director of the Inter-university Master Program in Music Therapy in Barcelona, Spain, and a working music therapist. She also teaches at Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya. From 1988 to 1998 she taught and studied music therapy at Willamette University.

She has published extensively. Her latest book, “Manual de Musicoterapia en Medicina,” will be released this month.

Brotons will speak about the different applications of music therapy — in education, medicine, mental health and gerontology.

Her lecture, presented by the Friends of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, is 7 p.m. Thursday, May 27, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Vancouver at 4505 E. 18th Street. A $10 donation is suggested.