Ft. Worth Star-Telegram
June 4, 2000

Joey Freeman works with his hands. He is a massage therapist, and he credits his success to the years he spent studying the piano. In effect, he is now helping people keep in tune with their bodies.

"I discovered by accident that I was giving better massages when I practiced the piano," he says.

Freeman lives in Athens, GA where he earned a master's degree in piano performance at the University of Georgia. It was not, of course a prerequisite to a career in massage therapy, even if it has had indirect benefits. Freeman, simply abandoned the piano, turning his back on a childhood pursuit.

"There was a period of 13 or 14 years when I never played in public," he says. "There were years when I didn't touch a piano."

Freeman started playing when he was 12 and growing up in tiny Toomsboro, Ga. He had begun the musical career by learning the trumpet in the school band, but changed his mind when he heard the band director play the piano.

"I wanted to have a fistful of notes to play," he says.

His parents were supportive but cautious; he practiced at school at first, but they bought a good practice piano when they were convinced his interest was serious.

But the joy of playing didn't last through the school years, Freeman says. "In a way I sort of burned out on piano. I decided to do something else."

After earning a second master's degree in musicology--having written a thesis on "Unity of Form and Expression in Hector Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet,"--Freeman finished an MBA with a specialty in personnel, and went to work as a career and job search specialist, writing several guidance books for college career placement centers.

This led to another. Always digitally oriented, he moved to massage therapy.

"I have a variety of things in my background," he says. "And seeking a coherence has challenged and troubled me.

Now, he says, he is on the cutting edge of integrating music making into massage, he also wants to integrate his work as a career adviser into the music and massage program. While this may seem far-fetched, Freeman says it's a natural progression

"It's like a spiritual journey," he says. "You come back to where you started."

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