About
Theresa Thompson is a Boston-based multi-instrumentalist and citizen artist who performs joyfully and extensively across genres (global music, Western classical, folk, indie and early music). She collaborates with various artists and projects in the Boston area including Crossroads of Sound, Global Voices Live, Orkestra Marhaba, The Makam Healing Project, Jens Rybo and Trillium, The Harvard World Music Collective and TAIL. Her teachers on violin have included Mina Buchsbaum and Beth Bahia Cohen, and she studied with Michelle LaCourse while pursuing a Master’s Degree in Viola Performance at the Longy School of Music. Thrilled to be a lifelong student, Theresa has studied Turkish makam and modal music with various teachers over the years including Beth Bahia Cohen, Fred Stubbs, Michael K. Harrist, Derya Türkan, and Tev Stevig.
In 1994, Theresa co-founded Tunefoolery Music, a non-profit organization dedicated to a unique and courageous community of ca. 60 musicians in mental health recovery who have together created a safe place where support, paid work and learning are the foundation for healing and recovery. She left Tunefoolery in 2021 after 27 years of service to the organization, its mission and the community.
Theresa has a psychotherapy practice in Cambridge and is a meditation instructor at Harvard Business School where she leads weekly mindfulness sittings as well as yoga nidra meditations accompanied by live music with Boston-based multi-instrumentalist Volkan Efe.
Her belief in the power of music to unite people of various cultures and backgrounds, promote healing and to effect social change continues to drive her work. When she is not performing on remote Swedish islands, rehearsing in local basements, or geeking out on makam theory, she can be found walking the streets of Cambridge with her dog Alice. 💜