Catherine Gilbert, MA

Owner - Om Sound Yoga

Hi! I’m Catherine. Nice to meet you. I hope you’re having a great day, and thank you for stopping by. I’m a professional musician of 27 years and the owner of Om Sound Yoga, LLC. Sound is powerful. As a person who works with sound, I admit my worldview changed one day when a Professor of Musicology in my undergraduate studies stated “after this class, you won’t listen to music the same way ever again; you’ll never experience your world the same way again.”

Wow - was that an understatement.

In 2013, I earned a Master of Arts Degree in Sociocultural Anthropology, Western Musicology, and Music Performance from the University of North Texas College of Music and a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the same institution in 2009. I’ve been studying and performing music (mostly cello) for nearly three decades.

I practice Acutonics Tuning Fork Sound Therapy. I am a classically-trained cellist of 27 years and have traveled the globe learning about traditional methods of healing.

Sound and meditation had such a profoundly constructive and nourishing affect and effect upon my life that I decided to start sharing what I had learned and began offering my very first Sound Bath Meditation Class in El Paso, TX in March of 2022. I honestly thought no one would come. But they did! When I moved back to the high Rockies, I deiced to continue offering Sound Bath Classes…this time in Crested Butte and Gunnison, CO. I felt like a kid playing with my etch-a-sketch. Try it like this…erase. Try it like that……erase.

But Taos kept calling me back. So here I am! Again! Back in Taos and here to offer a variety of services all centering around the idea of the union of Sound, Movement, Meditation, Music Education, and natural wellness practices like Acutonics. See the Services tab at the top of this webpage.

A little more about my music performance history and cultural studies: My performance history is broad, including seats with professional orchestras and symphonies throughout the United States, solo performances, black-box theater compositions, special events, music arrangement, composition, accompaniment of dance and theater performance, and much, much more. I am a musician, leader, teacher, performer, creator, and artist. I have traveled to remote areas of the world to study the nexus of ritual, healing, music, and culture. Most notably is my time studying the language, music, and religious/spiritual ritual practices of the Ewe speaking peoples in the Volta Region of southern Ghana. I learned so much while briefly living and studying in Denu, maybe most importantly how powerful music and community really are; music and community hold healing powers we grossly undermine here in the West. In addition to the myriad performance settings listed above, I was hired to record cello for a folk band in Sylvia Massey’s recording studio in Weed, CA. During that gig, I was offered a permanent seat in a Hollywood music production house. I’ve performed live on stage and all over the country with dozens of bands playing folk, bluegrass, rock, alternative, blues, jazz and world music.

Professionally as a musician, I have these epic degrees from a world-renowned music institution that educated 9-time Grammy Award-Winning singer-songwriter and pianist Nora Jones, every member of the Grammy Award-Winning band “Brave Combo” and Don Henley from the Eagles. I’ve performed under the precise and incredibly deliberate baton of the late and great Maestro Anshel Brusilow. I learned to begin mastering my cello from the late Eugene Osadchy. In graduate school, I continued my studies in Cello Performance in Nikola Ruzevic’s Cello Studio. Simultaneously in my graduate studies, I chose to learn the incredibly mind-blowing, poly-rhythmic music of the Ewe speaking-peoples from Ewe Chief, High Priest and Master Drummer Midawo Gideon Foli Alowoie both in Denu, Ghana and at my Alma Mater. In addition, I performed Clave and was a vocal lead in the lively UNT Afro-Cuban Ensemble under the direction of Jazz drummer and Afro-Cuban percussionist (and Master of Time itself) Jose Aponte. I’ve learned from and performed with some of the best musicians in the world, and at the height of their field. As a Cellist, I trace my lineage back to the Eastern European school of thought and practice that includes amazing performers like Matislav Rostropovich and both my mentors; this means I was trained to be expressive and precise, not just precise. Today, I use my classical training as a foundation to build and expand upon.

I study Acutonics under the direction of Carmen Cicotti, LMT (licensed massage therapist) and CAcP (Certified Acutonics Practitioner) and owner of Northwest Acutonics in Lopez Island, WA. More about Acutonics, Music Lessons and Sound Bath Meditation Class on my Services page.