#30 Lightning Strikes and a Musician is Born with Dr. Tony Cicoria
Dr. Tony Cicoria is a part time board certified Orthopedic Surgeon in Maine, former Chief of Orthopedics at Chenango Memorial Hospital, Norwich, New York, and Clinical Assistant Professor of Orthopedics at SUNY Upstate Medical School in Syracuse. He received his BS in Biology from The Citadel and is a graduate of the Medical University of South Carolina (MD, PhD) and the University of Virginia Orthopedic Surgery Residency.
Dr. Cicoria had the unfortunate (or fortunate) luck of being struck by lightning in 1994 while speaking on a public telephone during a family reunion near Albany, NY. As a result of the lightning, Dr. Cicoria had a near death and out of body experience (NDE, OBE) and became a sudden savant for classical piano music and composition. Because of his unusual introduction to the world of music, Dr. Cicoria has been featured in various magazines and was featured in Dr. Oliver Sacks’ book “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain”. Tony has given numerous recitals featuring music that he has composed, and has appeared in various television presentations around the world. He published his first works on a CD entitled “Notes From an Accidental Pianist” through CDBaby.com, and is currently working on a book about his experience called “On the Other Side of Life”
In this follow-up to the previous interview, Dr. Cicoria describes the sudden emergence of musical gifts that become available to him following his near death experience resulting from being struck by lightning.
“The music from the dream went through a lot of trouble to get here, the least you can do is write it.”
“I truly felt like I had tuned into a frequency and the music was downloaded into my head.”
NOTES
After being struck by lightning and a vivid near death experience, Dr. Tony Cicoria developed an insatiable craving for classical piano music, something that had previously held no interest for him.
He describes a powerful dream in which he was performing music in a concert hall. Upon awakening, the music continued to play in his head for a long time.
Urgently searching for a way to play his music, he took music lessons from a Julliard-trained teacher and attended an adult music camp, “Sonata” in Vermont.
In 2006 he was introduced to Dr. Oliver Sacks, a British neurologist who wrote “Awakenings”. Dr. Sacks strongly encouraged Tony to find a way to write the music, which he ultimately was able to do.
After Dr. Sacks published an article in the New Yorker, there was a lot of interest in Tony’s unusual story.
Tony describes the experience of playing his music in concert and the effect that it had on a number of members of the audience.
He explains how, on multiple occasions, emotional triggers would result in music “downloading” into his head.
Tony underwent a personal transformation after his NDE, becoming more empathetic and with a new approach to life.
He comments about how small children can still see the other side, and feels that it is important to recognize and validate what children are seeing.
During his near death experience his conscious self never wavered, even while he was dead, leaving him firmly convinced of the fact that his spirit would live on forever.
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