Connected! at The Fresno Revue

FRESNO, Calif., Oct. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Connected, the one-of-a-kind program of transformation and healing through listening to the music you love, comes to Fresno, California on Friday and Saturday, November 5 and 6, 2010, the weekend before Veterans Day. Connected honors California's Central Valley warriors, especially those with combat-related post- traumatic stress.

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Over more than 40 years of observing audiences during his live performances, Connected creator and facilitator Bill Protzmann has become fascinated with how music evokes emotion. From fascination came curiosity, then study, resulting in a well-founded new purpose for Connected: musical healing.

Protzmann presents specifically to audiences who seek more satisfying emotional experiences, or who seek to either initiate or supercharge their recovery from -- or coping skills with -- some form of physical, emotional, or mental disability, including:

• Active-duty military and Veterans dealing with war-related post traumatic stress;
• Survivors of abuse and cancer;
• Children of all ages;
• The terminally ill and aged;
• Caregivers.

Connected targets these specific groups, entertaining with a safe, affirming emotional experience, while at the same time providing the tools and instruction each member of the audience needs to repeat the experience for their own benefit and healing.

Rather than functioning as music therapy, Connected acts as a bridge between those who would benefit from some form of treatment and the vast community of resources available to them. The program does this by subtly opening audiences to the possibility and potential of having a safe, affirming emotional experience, introducing  the physiological processes by which this takes place, and inviting listeners to recreate this experience for themselves. "I'm a sort of 'live reminder' of how music changes us," Protzmann says. "We've all known at some level that sounds make us feel things. I provide well-researched evidence of why intentionally listening to the music you love changes you, and give you the tools to do this for yourself."

After experiencing Connected, internationally-recognized author, lecturer and researcher on addiction and recovery, Robert J. Ackerman, PhD, had this to say:

"Listening to Bill Protzmann at the piano pulls all of the positive things about living into place. He is a master at his ability to relate his music to recovery for everyone. His music and his words of wisdom touch and teach at the same time that recovery is truly a gift, just like his music."

Additional background on Bill Protzmann:

Bill Protzmann holds magna cum laude degrees in performance piano / musical theater (Bachelor of Music, University of California, Irvine, 1999), and English writing (Bachelor of Arts, Principia College, 1983). He is an accomplished composer, arranger, accompanist, entertainer, public speaker, entrepreneur, educator and writer, and a warm and humorous storyteller.

He has performed since the age of six, becoming a prize-winning classical artist and concerto soloist in his teens. He has played in virtually every capacity since, including on-stage work in musicals, melodramas and operas, jazz bands and combos, dance studios, salons, exclusive hotels and clubs, as an accompanist and arranger for classical and cabaret singers, as a ragtime entertainer, in educational settings ranging from pre- primary through university, and in theaters throughout the Western United States.

Among Protzmann's other current projects and accomplishments:

• His recording credits of healing music include "Serenity," an original channeled solo piano album, and keyboardist and co-creator of "Equilibrium," with Jodi Roberts (Tibetan bowls) and Cornell Kinderknecht (world flutes);
• He co-created and co-starred in the original smash operatic cabaret, "Diva!," with the late soprano Susan Asbjornson, Founder and Artistic Director of The Contemporary Opera of Los Angeles;
• He is co-creator and keyboardist of "The Rumi Project," a participatory performance in which the audience chooses poems by Jelaluddin Rumi that are then sung to improvised Western music.

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BILL PROTZMANN

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SOURCE Bill Protzmann