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Despins, Jean-Paul
Jean-Paul Despins. Teacher of neuropedagogy of music, b. Quebec City, 5 Jan 1935; B MUS (Montreal) 1970, MA (McGill) 1977, PhD (Montreal) 1984. He began studying piano at five, and then he studied flute at École Vincent-d'Indy. Following graduate studies in classics (Laval University), he turned to musicology (McGill University, the Sorbonne) and orthopedagogy (University of Montreal); this led him to establish a connection between the practice of music teaching and discoveries made in the fields of functional neurology and neuropsychology. His findings have been published in both French and Spanish in his book Le Cerveau et la musique / La Musica y el cerebro (Paris, 1986, Barcelone 1989).
Despins has written music teaching material for the Quebec Department of Education, and he has contributed articles to various periodicals, including Contact, Le Musicien québécois, La Recherche en éducation musicale au Québec, Sonances and Vie pédagogique. He has taught at the Catholic School Boards of Quebec City and Montreal and at the Regional School Board of Chambly, Que. Despins has taught neuropedagogy of music at Laval University since 1977. The only specialist in this area in Quebec, he devotes all of his time to teaching.
