Bridget Jankowski
Musician, Author, Instructor
Musician, Author, Instructor
About
Author, What Every Musician Needs to Know about the Body, revised edition,
Author, Body Mapping for Music Ministers
Founder of the Choral Mapping Program
Licensed Body Mapping Educator
Sponsoring Teacher / Training Committee, Assoc for Body Mapping Ed
Director of Music, St. Matthew Church, Akron, Ohio
Pianist, Choral Coach, Accompanist, Instructor
Bridget Jankowski has been involved in somatic disciplines for nearly thirty years. In 1998, she was the first person to become a Licensed Body Mapping Educator under the direction of Barbara Conable.
In 2019 the Association for Body Mapping Education awarded her the prestigious Barbara Conable Teaching Award. She has recently revised the original book What Every Musician Nees to Know about the Body, and is the author of Body Mapping for Music Ministers (GIA Publications).
In response to the needs of choir directors during the pandemic, she founded the Choral Mapping program in the summer of 2020. She continues to work with her Body Mapping colleagues to expand and develop its offerings.
She is the full-time Director of Music at St. Matthew Parish in Akron, Ohio where she directs an adult and children's choir and the cantor program. In addition, she maintains a private piano studio and is a sought-after accompanist in the Northeast Ohio area.
She has served on the boards of numerous non-profit organizations including as Immediate Past-President of the ABME Board.
This primer for all musicians provides a reliable base for a lifetime of playing and singing. The principles in these pages are the elemental foundation of music education, and will protect a musician from injury, promote the physical freedom and sensitivity needed for technical mastery, and secure the embodied intelligence that grounds musical power and subtlety. Musicians teaching from these principles will see their students thrive. Students studying and restudying these pages will delight in their enhanced performance. This book also serves as the text of a six-hour course on Body Mapping for musicians developed by Barbara Conable.
What Every Musician Needs to Know about the Body
Revised and Edited by Bridget Jankowski
Body Mapping for Music Ministers
Body Mapping for Music Ministers is devoted to helping pastoral musicians find ease, efficiency, and embodiment in their ministry. Like the popular What Every Musician Needs to Know about the Body by Barbara Conable, this book offers principles that will protect a pastoral musician from injury, promote the physical freedom and sensitivity for technical mastery, and secure the embodied intelligence that grounds musical power and subtlety.
This book also offers a deeper understanding of the connectedness between the pastoral music minister and the assembly, the shared purpose of celebrating the Mass together, and the complete awareness necessary to be fully present to oneself, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the Lord. As author Bridget Jankowski states, “we can’t be fully present to the Lord until we are fully present to ourselves.”
Topics covered include: cantors, the assembly, handbell choirs, pianists who play the organ, movement, balance, breath, and much more.
This book also offers a deeper understanding of the connectedness between the pastoral music minister and the assembly, the shared purpose of celebrating the Mass together, and the complete awareness necessary to be fully present to oneself, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the Lord. As author Bridget Jankowski states, “we can’t be fully present to the Lord until we are fully present to ourselves.”
Topics covered include: cantors, the assembly, handbell choirs, pianists who play the organ, movement, balance, breath, and much more.
Short lessons recorded for the National Association of Pastoral Musicians.
Sample Teaching
Body Mapping Basics
Testimonials
I can already feel this changing everything about my movement. For years I've had choir directors telling us not to 'jut our chin out" and 'let our head pull back,' and every time I tried it it just produced more tension in my neck because I didn't understand why, or what it meant...now that I understand how my spine and my skull connect, it makes perfect sense and I feel so much freer!Choral Mapping Student
I can already feel this changing everything about my movement. For years I've had choir directors telling us not to 'jut our chin out" and 'let our head pull back,' and every time I tried it it just produced more tension in my neck because I didn't understand why, or what it meant...now that I understand how my spine and my skull connect, it makes perfect sense and I feel so much freer!
Choral Mapping Student
When I look back over the past few decades, it feels as though I have spent a huge portion of my life as a professional musician dealing with tension, pain, stiff shoulders, tendinitis, and all kinds of bodily aches. Most of my colleagues would say the same, I expect. It never occurred to me to wonder if they were optional; I thought that was just part of being a musician.
Until last summer, when Bridget Jankowski, author of Body Mapping for Music Ministers, sat down with me one day during the 2018 NPM Convention in Baltimore, and taught me more about this remarkable practice.Our conversation quite literally changed almost everything for me about the way I conduct, the way I sing, the way I teach, and the way I work with my own choruses; it is truly amazing.
Jennifer Kerr Budziak
Loyola University Chicago
I appreciate your wisdom and guidance. I wanted to let you know I LOVE your book, Body Mapping for Music Ministers! Perfect for my Vocal Pedagogy Class for Instrumental Majors.
Deirdre Welborn Francis
South Carolina School of the Arts at Anderson University
Conductor, AU Women’s Choir
Excerpted from Masterclass
2021 Conference
Association for Body Mapping Education
Blog
You have a brilliant way of stating principles and practices so clearly that they can be understood and implemented easily!
Carol J. Dallinger
Professor Emerita of Music
University of Evansville