Radio Art welcomes with great pleasure for the months July and August an important man, exceptional composer, writer and great cardiologist at the Onassic Cardiac Surgery Center, Mr. Thanasis Dritsas, who undoubtedly belongs to the international pioneers in relation to the scientific activity on the cures through music.

Without doubt Mr. Dritsas is a very special man and his parallel path in life is almost moving. It opens for us wide open the window to humanity, to simpleness, to selfless giving and to dreaming.

We site below small extracts of words said by Thanasis Dritsas, comments of important people about him and a short cv.

Part of his work will be broadcasted by our radio station and will be played every Tuesday and Thursday 5-6 in the afternoon by both streams of our station after the kind offer of Mr. Dritsas.

Lambros Mitropoulos

----------

“Too much realism can make people sick. Man by nature consists of fairy tale substances. “

“If man loses his faith in dreaming, he faces the danger to become sick – sometime and physically. The term psychosomatic is wrong: all illnesses are psychosomatic, as there is no case that a man gets ill from a physical illness for example and his soul is not affected or vice versa.”

“I am afraid of the people that are afraid of dreaming in their lives or surrendering to experiences. I think of them as living dead. We, the doctors, define that a creature is alive when it breathes and its heart is beating. If man is not exposed to experiences, if man cannot do selfless things, then he lives as a ghost.”

“Music therapy is today an internationally recognized science as a supplement of the classic medicine. It is used not only in the hospital but also individually at home. The use of music helps especially groups of patients, which are under a lot of stress, such as patients that are treated in intensive care, units of new born and early born babies, units of comforting care etc.”

Most of the neuroscientists have concluded that music apprehension and music expression are a distinctive characteristic of the human kind, which has further substantially helped to the evolution of said kind. This is also a justification for the ancient Greek wisdom (Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates) that believed to the sacred role and the therapeutic value of music.

Thanasis Dritsas

----------

Extracts from comments on the last book of Thanasis Dritsas “Code Blue”.

“The metaphor helps the writer make the reader understand the imminent threat that life faces on our planet. It compacts the gliding of the collective self distractive behavior that has ruled in the globalized theory of consumerism in two words “sell – buy”. It’s about a certain route leading from over exploitation to extinction.”

“In the end this small book by Mr. Dritsas will acquire its own identity and achieve wider recognition.. ..basically due to its ability to transform common knowledge to emotional acquirement.”

Kostas Stefanis - Member of Greek Academy of Science, Professor of Phsychiatry

----------

"..It is about an interesting narrative, that reshapes literary with imagination and sensitiveness, many of the experiences that a doctor faces every day while serving his science.”

Christos Kittas - Dean of the University of Athens

----------

“This is the revolutionary theory of a Greek cardiologist who, when not attending to affairs of the heart, busies himself as a composer. He recommends music as the best stimulant for sporting success and claims that a series of studies have shown that, used in combination with the right diet, "it can act as an energy supplement in the attempt to reduce the use of pharmaceutical substances by young people involved in sport".

The Independent - London, 14-4-2004

----------

Born in Athens 1960. Studied medicine in the University of Athens, qualified as an MD (1984). Specialized in Cardiology, he worked as registrar in the Dept. of Cardiology at Guy’s Hospital London (1987-1990).

He worked as Research Fellow in Cardiology (1990-1994) at Hammersmith Hospital, Royal Postgraduate Medical, London. He has published scientific papers in high citation impact factor journals (Lancet, Journal of American College of Cardiology, American Journal of Cardiology, British Heart Journal, Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology etc) on subjects like cardiac arrhythmia, pacing, and cardiomyopathies.

In addition to medicine he has studied harmony, counterpoint and composition in Athens with professors K. Kydoniates and G. Ioannides and also took seminars on composition in UK. He has composed works for piano, chamber music, songs on modern Greek poetry, music for movie documentaries and also for full symphony orchestra. His works have been presented in live concerts and recorded by National Radio 3, performed by groups of musicians members of the Orchestra of Colours (founded by M. Hadjidakis) and the National Symphony Orchestra of Greek Radio-Television (ERT).

In Greece he was the first to introduce music as a clinical therapeutic tool in hospital practice (at the Onassic Cardiac Surgery Center) and he researches on music-medicine studying the hemodynamic and neuroendocrine effects of music in cardiac patients.

He made a radio production (1999-2001) for Greek National Radio 3 under the title The Magic Flute during which he commented and presented music on the subject of the healing power of music.

He is a member of the Hellenic Society of Cardiology, Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC), member of the American Association of Music Therapy (AMTA), International Society of Music in Medicine (ISMM).

He has released the following CDs with his music: STRING IMAGES (chamber music for flute and strings, MUSICA VIVA 2002, Athens), HYDATOGRAFIES-WATER COLORS (chamber music for 1-8 instruments, PROTASIS MUSIC, Athens 2004), TWO CHILDREN STORIES FOR NARRATOR AND CHAMBER ORCHESTRA (LYRA, Athens 2005), and more recently the CD, AT THE EDGE OF FAIRY TALES, SONGS AND FRAGILE SOUNDS FOR VOICE AND PIANO (PROTASIS MUSIC, Athens 2008). He has also produced CDs with work related to music therapy applications like THERAPEUTIC SOUNDS OF THE WORLD (a selection of pieces from classical and ethnic music indicated for the treatment of stress) produced by the well known Greek newspaper Eleutherotypia and MORFEAS-A sleep CD (Info Health eds, Athens 2005) in which the colaboration with the American anesthesiologist Dr. Fred Schwartz produced womb sounds and music which are utilized in order to introduce relaxation and sleep. He is also the editor of the books MUSICAL ACTIVITIES AS THERAPEUTIC TOOL (eds. National Institute of Research, Athens 2003) and ART AS THERAPY (Eds. National Institute of Research, Athens 2004).

He is also the author of books titled MUSIC AS MEDICINE (Athens, 2003, eds. Info Health, Greek edition) in which all aspects of music therapy and music medicine are presented and discussed with emphasis on clinical applications of music in modern medicine and CODE BLUE, which is a novel composed by small stories, where the writer does not worry so much about the inevitable death but about the life that each of us lives before he/she finally departs for the dark kingdom of Pluto.