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| Who's Who  Cathy
DeWitt Coordinator, Music Programs An eclectic professional musician since the 1970’s, Cathy DeWitt has shared the stage and the airwaves with Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, Garrison Keillor, Florida folk legend Will McLean, jazz pianist Rob Bargad, Afro-Cuban percussionist Bobby Sanabria, and others. A jazz vocalist and pianist, bluegrass guitarist and folksinger/songwriter, she serves on the Boards of the Gainesville Friends of Jazz and the Friends of Florida Folk. She is a nationally published writer, concert producer, and bandleader for the jazz quartet MoonDancer and the all women’s folk/bluegrass band Patchwork, a favorite on the Florida festival circuit. Her ten-year jazz concert series in tribute to jazz guitarist Charlie Bush was recorded for broadcast by North Central Florida’s National Public Radio affiliate, WUFT (www.wuft.org), where she now also produces and hosts a folk music show, “Across the Prairie,” on Sunday afternoons. In 1995 she found an unexpected setting for her musical versatility: Shands Arts in Medicine program in Gainesville, Florida, where she continues to create and sustain a pioneering, world-renowned Music in Medicine program. From piano playing in the hospital lobby to elevator singalongs, from hallway concerts to bedside harp in the ICUs, Cathy uses music to transform the hospital environment and the patient experience. As Musician in Residence/Music Program Coordinator for Arts in Medicine at both Shands hospitals in Gainesville, Florida, she plays several instruments and sings at the bedside for patients, trains and mentors other hospital musicians, and gives workshops on music as stress-management for caregivers.
WHY AN AIM ARTIST: Contact:
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has presented workshops and seminars at many universities, arts &
healing events, and hospitals, including conferences for the Society
for the Arts in Healthcare and spiritual gatherings and retreats for
Unity. Her consultant clients include Vanderbilt University, San Diego
Hospice, Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and the Royal Hospital in
London. Along with several individual songwriting awards, including
two from the 2006 Unisong International Songwriting Contest, she is
the winner of a Fetzer Grant for her Healing Music Programs, a Florida
Arts Council Individual Artist Enhancement Grant, and the National League
of Penwomen Branch Award for Music, Gainesville branch (2005). Through
her work with the Florida Center for Creative Aging, the University
of Florida was chosen as a host site for the NIH/NEA funded Vital Visionaries
project in 2006 and 2007-08. In 2006 she was chosen as one of a handful
of national consultants for the Society for the Arts in healthcare (
