Pre-Concert Lecture, Kayleen Asbo, Ph. D. 2016

Kayleen Asbo is a passionate scholar: a cultural historian, musician, writer and teacher who weaves myth, music, psychology, history and art with experiential learning. A faculty member of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for seventeen years, Kayleen also teaches regularly for the Osher Life Long Learning Institutes at UC Berkeley, Sonoma State University and Dominican University. Her classes on a wide array of topics ranging from Depth Psychology to Dante to Contemporary Classical Music have been hailed as “inspirational,” “fascinating and compelling,” “transformational” and “truly life-changing.”

Educated at Smith College, Mills College, the San Francisco Conservatory, Pacifica Graduate Institute and the University of California, Kayleen wrote her Ph.D dissertation on Passion and Paradox: The Myths of Mary Magdalene in Music, Art and Culture. Kayleen also holds three master’s degrees: one each in music (piano performance), mythology and psychology. Kayleen has been a guest presenter and lecturer on the intersection of history, mythology, psychology and the arts at Oxford University in England, the Assisi Institute of Depth Psychology Conference in Italy, the Houston Jung Institute, Chartres Cathedral in France, Grace Cathedral and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. In 2016, she has taken on the roles as a pre-concert lecturer with the San Francisco Opera and Santa Rosa Symphony and has become a consultant in archetypal psychology, myth and ritual for Proctor and Gamble.

The Creative Director and Resident Mythologist for the Mythica Foundation for Education, Contemplation and the Arts, Kayleen leads workshops and retreats throughout the country and offers a pilgrimage to sacred sites in France every year.

A Beethoven Tribute (five-part series)

“From the heart … to the heart”
Join Susan Waterfall and an array of exceptional Festival musicians for five days of lectures and narrated concerts exploring the life and music of Beethoven, the most influential and consistently popular composer in Western music. Beethoven became the defining archetype of the artist and left us with a body of work unsurpassed in its capacity to exalt, reveal and heal the human condition.

Susan Waterfall’s production of the Beethoven Tribute series is generously sponsored by Thomas Safran.

“Waterfall’s productions always present exciting, absorbing playing of great music, but are also rare, distinctive examples of what can be called music education, though they’re more conversational, truly a sharing of perspective, interest, anecdote. There’s a sense of immediacy to her delivery, weaving in and out of the playing, an intimately conceived present awareness of this heritage. It’s something unique that needs to be experienced.” – Ken Bullock, Berkeley Daily Planet

Explore the Series