New Pathway To Healing: An Interview With Cathy DeWitt

An eclectic professional musician since the 1970’s, Cathy DeWitt has shared the stage and the airwaves with Pete Seeger, Garrison Keillor, Florida folk legend Will McLean, jazz pianists Rob Bargad and Dave Frishberg. A jazz vocalist, pianist, guitarist folksinger and award-winning songwriter, she has sung and played at Unity churches around the country, and served as Music Director at both Unity of Ocala and Unity of Gainesville. As a New Thought musician she has appeared with authors Marianne Williams, Bernie Seigel, Larry Dossey, and Alan Cohen.

 

She has published several songs in Unity songbooks and this year her song “Everybody’s Somebody’s Child” was selected as a finalist in the Posi-Awards Video category. Other awards include National Penwomen Award (Gainesville branch) for Composition, 2007, Spirit of Gainesville Award nominee 2011, and Number One Jazz musician in Gainesville, Reverb Nation charts, for the past 5 years in a row.  Her latest CD, The Traveler, is an album of original music put to the words of Unity poet James Dillet Freeman, Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, author Alan Cohen and other spiritual leaders.  The CD is getting a phenomenal response, and has been called "breathtakingly beautiful", "uplifting and inspiring", and even "one of the most beautiful albums I've ever heard!"

 

In 1995 she found an unexpected setting for her musical versatility at Shands Arts in Medicine program in Gainesville, Florida, where her hospital lobby concerts, elevator singalongs, and bedside harp transform the hospital environment and the patient experience.