Board of Directors

Andrew Schulman has been a professional musician based in New York City since 1975. In July 2009 his life was saved, and changed forever, when music by Bach saved him in a coma.

To give thanks for that miracle he became the resident musician in the Surgical ICU at Beth Israel Medical Center from 2010-16. In 2017 he played in the Surgical, Medical, and Neurosurgical ICUs in NYU Langone Medical Center. From 2016 -2020 he did a monthly residency at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, MA.  During that time he received the first certification as a  Medical Musician, from Berkshire Medical Center/University of  Massachusetts Medical School

In September 2017 Schulman became the first musician accepted as a professional member of the Society of Critical Care Medicine. He has  spoken and performed at several national and regional SCCM conferences. He has served 2 three-year terms on the SCCM ICU Liberation  Committee, and has now co-founded the  Knowledge Education Group (KEG), "Medical Music in the Critical Care Environment." He is also a member of  the International Association for Music & Medicine.

In  May 2019 Andrew Schulman served as a consultant to the  Vanderbilt University Medical Center-Therapeutic Music in the ICU  project for hospitalized patients. He performed  virtual medical music there twice a week in 2025.

In February 2020  he was appointed Visiting Artist with the Georgetown Lombardi Arts and  Humanities Program of Georgetown University Medical Center in  Washington, D.C., making monthly visits to play in the ICUs of the Verstandig Pavilion. Julia Langley, faculty director of the program invited him to co-develop a study of ICU music in the Georgetown liver transplant ICU. The study was completed in 2025.

Andrew and his wife Wendy Sayvetz are the subjects of the documentary film Andrew & Wendy (2014) which has been presented at international film festivals and aired multiple times on PBS-TV. He is the author of Waking The Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul (Macmillan:Picador, 2016), also available as an audiobook (Blackstone Publishers). He will be featured in the upcoming film documentary, Heart Beat. He and Wendy live in New York City with their four legged furry kid, Phoebe, a Yellow Labrador Retriever.

Suzanne comes to MMI through the influence of her late husband, Robert Crim, a classical guitarist and lutenist who was a dear friend of Andrew Schulman. 

 
Reading Andrew’s journal, and then his book, about his work as a musician in the Beth Israel Medical Center Surgical ICU convinced her that music in critical care medicine was of great value to the well being of patients, family members, and the medical staff.  She was all too familiar with how difficult it was for patients, having seen her niece go through treatment for sarcoma cancer and her father go through several serious operations.

 
A lawyer by training, she retired from the Federal government after 30  years with the Environmental Protection Agency, helping to protect our nation’s waters, including wetlands, coastal waters, and oceans.  While working she volunteered as a literacy tutor and a mentor for junior staff.  

 
In retirement, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, going to concerts, and volunteering for the environment.

Roger is Distinguished Professor Emeritus from the University of Puget Sound, where for 25 years he taught clinical anatomy, neuroscience, and psychological aspects of physical therapy practice to doctoral PT students. As a practicing physical therapist, he specialized in treating chronic pain patients, with emphasis on managing complex regional pain syndrome. 

His research work explored treatment approaches for chronic pain, neurological mechanisms of pain experience, and how life factors modulate our perceptions of pain and suffering. Before entering physical therapy, he was a psychophysiologist working to help uncover how emotional stress in our lives alters human physiology and disease susceptibility. He’s authored three textbooks regarding human stress and contributed chapters on chronic pain treatment for the three most recent editions of the encyclopedic reference text, Bonica’s Management of Pain. His research findings have been presented at numerous worldwide venues, including the Nobel Institute for Neurophysiology, World Institute of Pain, and World Congress of Neurology.

Integrating psychophysiological expertise and hands-on treatment of patients with chronic pain has afforded him unique perspectives on both pain management and understanding the complex (and often surprising) relationships between our bodies, our minds, and mechanisms within the human brain that impact disease, suffering, and healing. Roger is an avid guitar player/builder and enthusiastic proponent of music’s multifaceted power to positively impact human development, physiology, and health.

 Music has been a healing presence in Barry's life from the beginning when he learned to play guitar at age 12. Mostly self-taught, he has had a career as performer, arranger, conductor, author and at age 81, remains active as a classical guitar teacher. He has performed with the Seattle Symphony, the Portland Opera, and the Joffrey Ballet, toured with Mikael Baryshnikov, and as a solo guitar player, opened shows for Ray Charles, Jeff Beck, Bo Diddley and many others. He is the author of the 1987 Prentice-Hall textbook, Popular Guitar Music, essentially the first text to teach music theory using accurate transcriptions of well-known contemporary guitar playing.

Earlier in his career he worked as a software entrepreneur, developing and writing software for theaters and other arts organizations, and he brings that knowledge to help the Medical Musician Initiative achieve its goals in teaching musicians to work in critical care settings, and for the important work we do in research.