Meet Our Staff

Dr. Concetta M. Tomaino, D.A., MT-BC, LCAT

Executive Director/Co-Founder
Institute for Music and Neurologic Function
Senior Vice President for Music Therapy
CenterLight Health System

A pioneer in the field of music therapy, Dr. Concetta Tomaino is both the Executive Director and co-founder of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF) and the Senior Vice President for Music Therapy at CenterLight Health System, (formerly Beth Abraham Family of Health Services) Internationally known for her research in the clinical applications of music and neurologic rehabilitation, Dr. Tomaino has lectured on music therapy throughout the United States and in Argentina, Australia, South Africa, Italy, England, and Canada. A past president of the American Association for Music Therapy, Dr. Tomaino was honored at the United Nations with the Music Therapists for Peace Award of Accomplishment. Committed to fostering the broadest access to music therapies for people in need the world over, Dr. Tomaino’s work with the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function has advanced the state of the art and science of music therapy for individuals suffering the effects of brain trauma including stroke, or who are afflicted with such degenerative neurological diseases as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

Dr. Tomaino’s work has been featured on national programs including 48 Hours and 60 Minutes; on international programs including the BBC; and in books on health and healing, including A Matter of Dignity, by Andrew Potok; The Mozart Effect, by Don Campbell; Age Protectors (Rodale Press); Sounds of Healing, by Mitchell Gaynor, M.D; and An Anthropologist on Mars, by Oliver Sacks, M.D. Dr. Sacks' book Musicophilia is dedicated to her.

Prior to earning a Masters and Doctor of Arts in Music Therapy from New York University, Dr. Tomaino was graduated with a BA in Music Performance (with a minor in psychology and sciences) from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She joined the Bronx, NY-based CenterLight Health System in 1980 and soon became one of the foremost proponents of the emerging field of Music Therapy. Fifteen years later, Dr. Tomaino helped found the IMNF. Today, in addition to her work with CenterLight Health System and the IMNF, Dr. Tomaino is on the faculty of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the ATTP II team of the National Parkinson’s Foundation and the New York State Geriatric Education Consortium. A founding board member of the International Association for Music and Medicine; Dr. Tomaino was a Super Panelist for the GRAMMY in the Schools program and has served on the Certification Board of Music Therapists, the Journal of Music Therapy, and on the advisory boards for the Center for Alternative Research at the Kessler Institute, and the International Journal of Arts Medicine.

Dr. Tomaino is the recipient of numerous honors and accolades, including a Touchstone Award from “Women in Music” for her visionary spirit, the 2004 Music has Power Award from the IMNF and the Zella Bronfman Butler Award from the UJA-Federation of New York in partnership with the J.E. and Z.B. Butler for outstanding work on behalf of individuals with physical, developmental or learning disabilities. Most recently, Dr. Concetta Tomaino was honored as one of “Three Wise Women” by the National Organization of Italian American Women.

Mijin Kim, D.A., L.C.A.T., C.M.T.

Director of Research
Institute for Music and Neurologic Function

The Director of Research of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF), Mijin Kim trained originally as a classical pianist in her native Korea. Despite garnering awards, accolades and a BA from Seoul National University, Kim turned her attention to the therapeutic nature of music and the science behind it some 16 years ago. Since 1994, Kim has worked with a wide variety of various clinical populations including inpatient and outpatient psychiatric adults; children and adolescents with emotional and developmental difficulties, and people with neurological impairments.

In the years that followed, Kim earned both her Masters and Doctor of Arts in Music Therapy from New York University (NYU) and was designated as both a Licensed Creative Arts Therapist and a Certified Music Therapist. Dr. Kim subsequently taught graduate courses in the music therapy program at NYU, as well as at several colleges and universities in Korea, and provides clinical supervision to music therapy interns at various medical and health care facilities in New York.

A key focus of Dr. Kim’s research on behalf of the IMNF is the effect and therapeutic benefit of music on people with various forms of Autism. An outgrowth of her doctoral thesis, Dr. Kim’s current research explores the ability of people with autism to express themselves and their intentionality through music, as well as how the brain processes music and its impact on memory, speech, emotion and motor functions.

Dr. Kim’s research has been published in medical and music therapy journals and texts nationally and internationally.

Benedikte B. Scheiby, MMA, MMEd, DPMT, CMT, LCAT, AMT

Director of Music Therapy Clinical Training and Supervision
Senior Clinician
CenterLight Health System

Internationally known and respected for her work in music psychotherapy with medical trauma, Benedikte Scheiby has been creating and implementing internship and training programs on behalf of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF) and CenterLight Health System since 1996. In the vanguard of music therapy innovation since the 1980s, Scheiby left her native Denmark where, as a tenured professor in Aalborg University, she helped establish Bachelor through Doctoral degree Music Therapy training.

A recipient of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Danish Humanistic Research Council Awards, Scheiby came to the United States in 1990 to research the area of music therapy: the complications and biases when the music therapist is both the clinician and the researcher in the same research project. By 1991, she joined New York University’s Music Therapy Masters Program as an adjunct assistant professor. By 1993, she joined the Art Therapy Masters Program at New York’s Pratt Institute as part of the adjunct faculty.

Scheiby speaks seven languages, a distinct asset as she travels and lectures extensively on music therapy and has presented at conferences and workshops throughout Europe, Scandinavia, Asia and the Americas. Scheiby has also published 26 peer reviewed articles and book chapters in English, German, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese and Danish, has authored one book and co-produced one international DVD and one CD on music therapy education and training; music psychotherapy in medical trauma; music therapy research, and Analytical Music Therapy (AMT).

Indeed, Benedikte Scheiby is the only designated Analytical Music Therapy trainer in the United States who was personally trained by AMT’s founder, Mary Priestley. For the past 15 years she has also served as the director of a postgraduate AMT training institute in Manhattan.

Scheiby resides in Westchester County, NY with her husband, fellow music therapist, researcher and musician, Professor Kenneth S. Aigen and their two children. Scheiby plays a host of instruments from piano, cello and accordion to the North American Indian flute and an array of Asian percussion instruments. She enjoys traveling, hiking, kayaking and proudly includes climbing the six kilometers (3.72 miles) of Kenya’s Mount Kilimanjaro among her accomplishments.

Ginger Lai, MT-BC

Music Therapist
Institute for Music and Neurologic Function

A native of Taiwan, Lai is a music therapy clinician, special project manager and internship supervisor at the IMNF.

She emigrated to the United States from Taiwan to pursue higher education, first earning a Bachelor of Music degree in piano and horn performance with a pre-med prerequisite from the University of Southern Mississippi. Lai was awarded a Lucy Moses Scholarship and continued her education at Yale University where she earned a Master of Music in horn performance.

Continuing her music therapy training at Philadelphia’s Drexel University, Ginger Lai joined CenterLight Health System first as in intern in 2005 and as a therapeutic recreation specialist at CenterLight Healthcare, a member of CenterLight Health System in 2006. Presently serving as a board certified music therapist at the IMNF, in addition, Lai is the project manager for the Leslie and Samuel Fan Fox research project which serves the medically frail culturally diverse elderly in the New York metro area.

In 2007, Lai’s co-presentation with CenterLight Health System speech therapist Darlene Monda at the annual Mid-Atlantic Region of the American Music Therapy Association (MAR-AMTA) Conference in Maryland focused on music’s role in speech therapy.

Lai’s musical abilities range from the piano, harpsichord and organ to the French horn, Bamboo flute, guitar, bass and r-hu (or erhu), a traditional Chinese stringed instrument, as well as various forms of Chinese percussion.

The winner of the 1998 Young Artist competition at Mississippi State, Lai went on to perform as a featured piano soloist with the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra. She has also performed with orchestras and chamber ensembles in several venues, including the National Concert Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, New York City’s Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, Thalia Mara Hall in Jackson, Mississippi and Mexico’s Puebla Conservatory. Lai continues to freelance as a professional musician in the New York metro area. She is regularly heard in the Lehman community band and Westchester band.

Tom McClelland

Music Therapist
Beth Abraham Health Services

Tom McClelland first joined Beth Abraham Health Services, a member of CenterLight Health System in 1997 as a part-time staff music therapist, following a one-year music therapy internship there that began in 1995. By 1999, McClelland’s commitment to the music therapy program at CenterLight Health System Health Services increased to full-time, and he worked with neurologically impaired adults including residents diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, head trauma, stroke and aphasia.

After a youth spent playing in rock bands in and around Columbus, Ohio, McClelland enlisted in the Air Force and was stationed at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He performed as singer and guitarist for his fellow troops, followed by performances at overseas Air Force bases in Thailand, Taiwan and Okinawa. Within two and a half years of his enlistment, Tom was directing the prestigious Kadena Air Force base Chapel Folk Choir in Okinawa, already regarded as the world’s number two Air Force choir.

Returning to Ohio after his service, McClelland earned a Bachelor of Music degree from Capital University Conservatory of Music in Columbus. As an undergraduate, Tom toured Europe with their chapel choir, toured California with the men’s glee club and played guitar with the Conservatory’s jazz big band on a musical piece that took top honors for jazz composition in a national college competition. While at Capital University, Tom got to hone his talents alongside of jazz legends and luminaries including drummer Cozy Cole, saxophonist Phil Woods and the iconic, award winning jazz/blues vocalist, Joe Williams.

Revisiting his youthful rock roots after graduating, Tom toured the college circuit in a rock and roll band with A& M recording artist Willie Phoenix, before moving to New York City. Installed in Greenwich Village, he studied guitar with folk legend Dave Van Ronk, teamed up with folk music pioneer Sis Cunningham and shared the stage with such leading lights of the folk world as Pete Seeger and Tom Paxton.

Wishing to continue the studies in music therapy that he began a decade earlier at the University of Dayton, Tom enrolled in New York University and worked as a music therapy volunteer at a senior center before undertaking his music therapy internship at Beth Abraham Health Services.

In 2005, Tom helped celebrate the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function’s 10th Anniversary when he performed with a vocal pop group made up of three Beth Abraham residents at the Music Has Power Awards at Lincoln Center.

Today, in addition to providing individual music therapy sessions for Beth Abraham Health Services residents and leading music therapy groups on several of the facility’s units, Tom directs – as he has since 1998 – the Beth Abraham Gospel Choir. Tom also volunteers at Beth Abraham Health Services on Sunday mornings to play music at a church service for the residents.

Marlon I. Sobol MT-BC, LCAT

Manager of the IMNF
Schnurmacher Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing

The manager of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF) at Schnurmacher Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in White Plains, NY, Marlon Sobol runs the facility’s music therapy programs. Board certified in Music Therapy and a Licensed Creative Arts Therapist, Sobol’s lifelong passion for music, his training and an innate sense of empathy are essential elements in his ability to care for people with a broad range of afflictions including Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, aphasia and depression.

In addition to his professional certifications and credentials, Sobol earned a BFA from New York’s New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, where he studied percussion with jazz greats Bobby Sanabria and Charlie Persip. Indeed, he was the first student to go through the school’s Creative Arts Therapy Program and continue to a career in music therapy.

An accomplished percussionist in his own right Sobol plays congas, djembe, drumset, melodica, and vibraphone. In 2006 he joined Mickey Hart (of Grateful Dead fame) and renowned fellow music therapist Christine Stevens as a Drum Circle Facilitator. Subsequently Sobol opened the 2008 "Living Well with Dementia" Conference and demonstrated his drum circle facilitation abilities on an instructional DVD sponsored by the New York State Department of Health entitled "Rhythmic Activities for Everyday Care.” Sobol’s original composition "Banks to the River" was the DVD’s featured soundtrack. In 2010, Sobol created a follow up audio CD entitled "Keep On Moving" Music for Therapeutic Rhythmic Activities to increase patient outcomes and staff involvement while enhancing the clinical workplace environment.

Sobol’s musical pedigree runs in the family. His father is a master clarinetist and concert producer and his mother is a concert pianist, as well as a music teacher for special learners. The younger Sobol has shared the stage with musical legends Richie Havens, David Amram, Candido Camero, as well as hip hop artist Dres from the group Black Sheep, and pop reggae star Matisyahu. Sobol was featured on the Grammy nominated album, "Youth", has performed at Madison Square Garden and appeared on the Carson Daly Show. He is the leader of the NYC based Hip-Hop/Reggae band Shem's Disciples, composing, arranging and producing the band’s music.

His work as both musician and music therapist has been featured in "DRUM!" Magazine; in "Preserving Your Memory" Magazine and in the Journal News, the Gannett newspaper serving New York’s Westchester County and the Lower Hudson Valley. Marlon Sobol is endorsed by Toca Percussion.

In addition, the IMNF is fortunate to have the dedication and extraordinary professionalism of a wonderful cadre of per diem music therapy staff. They are Dr. Joseph Nagler, (DA, CMT); Ariel Weissberger, (MA, MT-BC), Susan Berkowitz, (MA, MT-BC), Tasoula Harlan, (MT-BC), and Tania Papayannopoulou (EdM, MA, AVPT).