Meet the Hawaii piano virtuoso who’s using her craft as a way to heal

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Renate Rohlfing’s musical talent put her on stages many musicians can only dream of reaching, like Carnegie Hall and London’s Royal Albert Hall.
Her piano playing journey began in her childhood home in Manoa.
“Supposedly, gymnastics was going really badly when I was three years old,” she said with a laugh. “So my mom thought, ‘Okay, we have this piano. Maybe she’ll like piano.’ And I just loved it.”
She graduated from The Juilliard School in New York and had a distinguished career as concert pianist who traveled the world. But in 2018, she began to look at music very differently.
“I started reading this article by The Kennedy Center about music and memory, and I thought, ‘I want to do that,’” she said.
Armed with a master’s degree in music psychotherapy from NYU, Rohlfing is now an associate professor of music therapy at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
She works with people who have acute psychiatric and psychological needs, using music to unlock their memories.
“That is exactly what we tap into in a therapeutic way,” she said. “We’re able to access more difficult emotions and difficult experiences through music.”
Rohlfing recently received prestigious Mass Cultural Council Grant to advance her work. She’s now developing a book of sound and music awareness exercises for caregivers, parents and children.
“I’m a big believer that our histories and our ancestry really create this idea of identity,” she said.
She is also helping to create a new certificate program at Berklee called the Community Health Musician’s Certificate. It’s for performing artists who want to better connect with their own communities.
“I feel like the diversity of music that’s available in Hawaii, and that I grew up with, is such a strong influence on my work now and always has been,” she said.
Rohlfing isn’t performing on stage as often as she used to, but her passion for music and the power it holds is stronger than ever.
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