Katie Down
Music psychotherapist & Sound School co-leader
Katie Down is a licensed creative arts therapist, board-certified music therapist and EMDR practitioner who co-leads the annual five-day Sound School retreat in Mazunte alongside Jessica Caplan. She holds a master's in music psychotherapy from NYU and a composition degree from New England Conservatory, with post-graduate training in trauma studies and Deep Listening lineage with Rhiannon, Meredith Monk, Lisa Sokolov and Pauline Oliveros. A professional flutist and multi-instrumentalist, her work crosses classical, jazz, world music and clinical sound therapy.
Current sessions
- ◦ Annual 5-day Sound School retreat in Mazunte (with Jessica Caplan)
- ◦ Music psychotherapy and EMDR sessions
- ◦ Deep Listening and voice work intensives
- ◦ Composition and sound-design commissions
Background
Katie is a New York-based creative arts therapist with a clinical lineage that’s unusual in the sound healing world: NYU-trained music psychotherapy, New England Conservatory composition, EMDR Level III, and Deep Listening training under Pauline Oliveros, Meredith Monk and Rhiannon. She also teaches as adjunct professor at SUNY New Paltz.
How she works
Sessions and trainings draw on flute, voice, bowls, drums and tuning forks alongside trauma-informed protocols. Her contribution to Sound School pairs Jessica Caplan’s vocal and sound-bath work with formal music-therapy frameworks — students get both the artistic and the clinical lens.
Where to find her
Sound School in Mazunte runs annually as a five-day immersion. Outside of that, Katie’s clinical and teaching work is based in New York; she’s bookable for private music psychotherapy and for guest workshops at retreat centers and universities.