Keys to the Kingdom

Keys to the Kingdom: Reflections on Music and the Mind charts the course of an unusual odyssey. For nearly a decade, Kathleen Housley played piano with Katrina Withey, a gifted musician partially paralyzed from a stroke. To understand those times in their playing when disabilities disappeared in a shimmer of grace, Housley wrote brief reflections, turning to neuroscience and history for deeper insight. Some are as complex as a fugue. Others are as simple as a finger exercise on the C scale. Yet sounding throughout the reflections is a sublime theme-the importance of friendship.