Rian McGonigal

Rian began music at 10 years old with standard guitar lessons. At 12 he switched his focus to classical guitar. At 15 he joined a rock n’ roll band while still pursuing his classical practice. In his senior year of high school, his band, Sredni Vashtar,  won the county ‘Battle of the Bands’, and he also won his high school talent show playing solo classical guitar.
In 1976 Rian qualified for master classes in classical guitar in France and Italy, and was awarded the Diploma of Merit from Accademia Chigiana in Sienna, Italy, where Andres Segovia taught until the year before.

Returning from a summer of studies in Europe, Rian obtained management and began performing on the college concert circuit in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties. Rian’s manager also got him concerts in nursing homes and drug rehabilitation centers, where the feedback was that his performances were having therapeutic effects besides being entertaining.

Rian felt that the benefits of creating music were holistically healing, and in 1989 he began weekly group drumming workshops at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles where the therapeutic results continued. His drumming workshops were written up in the LA Times and he was contacted by centers for criminal teens and abused children, where the therapeutic results were continuing.

He trained staff at these centers to continue the workshops with the kids.


Rian added crystal singing bowls and Himalayan (aka Tibetan) bowls to his workshops and the feedback was incredible. In 1995 he went to Australia where he was introduced to the Aboriginal Didgeridoo as a healing instrument. He returned from Australia and began using all the instruments, drums, singing bowls, didgeridoo, and classical guitar as part of the Music & Sound Therapy Departments he started at the Simonton Cancer Center, and the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, where he underwent cancer treatment himself during his second bout with cancer.

Rian developed therapeutic methods using all the instruments and began teaching others how to utilize sound for healing in their lives, and the lives of others. He has helped dozens of holistic medical practitioners introduce sound therapy into their practices, and trained thousands how to use sound for healing.