The Collective

Kathleen Riley is a pianist, Yamaha Artist in Education, performer, researcher, lecturer, teacher and writer with a mission to help performing artists connect more deeply with their purpose and heart’s intelligence, and to voice it through their creativity. In her own words, she is, a “who would have thunk it?” Born and raised in Bergen County, New Jersey, and moving to Cleveland Ohio, she currently resides in California.

Kathleen has woven a path to help others through her expertise as a musician, biofeedback specialist, researcher and coach. Having received three degrees in piano performance, she performed for many years as a soloist and chamber musician.

She pursued a doctorate in piano performance and investigated innovative ways to deepen pianists’ awareness of nuances in performers’ interpretations. Kathleen then went on to post-doctoral studies in neurophysiology and psychology at NYU.

This led her down a path in 2001 that changed the trajectory of her career. She brought in her new found knowledge through neurophysiology, psychology and biofeedback into her “toolbox” and created classes and coaching sessions for students and professionals to shift into coherence and align with purpose and clarity to their vision.

While living in Cleveland, Ohio, Kathleen served on faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music where she designed courses in this alignment, Optimal Performance, and ran a biofeedback lab where her students could monitor themselves, seeing as well as experiencing the shifts that were occurring in both mind and body. Kathleen shares that the power of biofeedback is that it is a window inside the body, and our bodies never lie. Seeing is believing. She was also invited on staff at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Integrative and Lifestyle Medicine to introduce her special work with performers and biofeedback.

Her latest research study explored the effects of a shared heart intention among members of a string quartet on the musicians and audience members. The research was filmed and produced as a documentary, Intention: The Power of the Heart.

In response to COVID-19, she created the Global Coherent Performers Community on Facebook, designed to bring performers and researchers together to understand and explore new innovative ways to communicate through music and affect the global field.

In addition, Kathleen added several new platforms to her “toolkit” – that of show host on the Awake TV Network of Sounds of Coherence, for three seasons. She also convenes sessions for Ubiquity University Humanity Rising Global Solutions Summit on the transformative effects of music and the arts on humanity and consciousness.