412 Music and Medicine • Christoph Wiesendanger

Sometimes it’s not what we hear, but what emerges in the space just before—where meaning hasn’t formed yet—but something is already calling your attention. It’s that quiet edge of awareness where both healing and mystery tend to show up.

In this conversation with Christoph Wiesendanger, a jazz pianist with an abiding interest in Chinese medicine, we explore how rhythm, resonance, and reflective awareness shape both music and healing. Christoph’s journey from childhood exposure to Daoist classics, to martial arts training, the sonic influence of Milford Graves, and years of study with Z’ev Rosenberg, offers a surprising look at the interweavings of music and medicine.

Listen into this discussion as we explore how the pulse relates to rhythm, the difference between keeping time and making it, the idea of cultivating yourself through sound, and how silence and intention shape both clinical and musical presence.

In This Conversation We Discuss:

• Growing up surrounded by Chinese philosophy and classical texts
• How listening deeply informs both music and acupuncture
• The influence of rhythm and space in clinical perception
• Parallels between music improvisation and clinical intuition
• The impact of martial arts training on body awareness
• Rediscovering movement memory through returning to kung fu
• Studying Chinese medicine with Zev Rosenberg
• The practice of playing music as personal cultivation
• Learning pulse through the lens of rhythm and variation
• The influence of Milford Graves and listening to one’s own heartbeat
• Comparing computer-generated rhythms with organic human rhythms
• Rhythm as a vehicle for transformation, healing, and self-discovery

I am not a doctor, but here are some thoughts: Determined all the more to reach a clearer understanding of the deep principles, I will practice day and night. A truly harmonious person is in tune with everything in the universe. (Jing/Resonance). What we need is a vision of human potential. ​

Christoph Wiesendanger, Pianist and Composer.

Born in Zürich, lives and works there.

In my numerous projects I have developed forms on the interface of composition and improvisation. The focus of my work lies on theme fields as silence and action, gestures, movement, presence, energy, posture and concentration.

My work is strongly connected with the long time studies of jazz and the jazz tradition, contemporary composition, rock music, electronic music, musique concrète and traditional Japanese music.

At the center of my music stands concentration and presence. Out from this silent center polyphonic and polyrhythmic structures are developed, superpositions of motion are in contrast with emptiness and open space. The music unfolds, resonates, changes and returns to silence.

I teach at the Zurich University of Arts ZHDK. My long-time teaching experience is an important aspect of my musical work. Questioning the “teaching of improvisation” and explorations on “practising” have a direct influence on my work.

I’ve practiced Chinese and Japanese martial arts since my youth and have studied Traditional Chinese medicine for many years with Dr. Z`ev Rosenberg. A Daoist way of life and living and the Classical medicine texts such as the Nei Jing, Nan Jing, Shang Han Lun, or the work of Li Dong Yuan, Li Shizhen and Sun Simao are the sources where I always go back to.

Links and Resources

Visit Christoph on his Website, Substack or Instagram.

Milford Graves on Heartbeats and Sounding the Universe.  
Full Mantis, a movie about the work of Milford Graves.

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