David Villareal

Blog Post · Tuesday, May 12, 2026 David Villareal, RPh, CCM

There is something that happens when you share a vision with someone and they say yes.

Not a polite yes. Not a “sounds interesting” yes. A real yes — the kind where you can tell they actually felt something.

That is what I have experienced with each of the musicians who are joining me for the founding session of Acoustic Healing on May 17.

I want to introduce them to you — not as performers, but as people. Because that is what this project has always been about. People. Presence. The willingness to show up for someone you may never meet again.

Mary Superak joins us for the morning session. Mary is the kind of musician who walks into a room and makes the air feel different. In a hospital setting, that is not a small gift. It is everything.

Julia Bartles Emahiser will be with us for the afternoon session on May 17. Julia brings a quality that is essential to this work — the understanding that what we offer is not a performance. It is a presence. She understood that from the first conversation.

And then there is Vivian Sarubbi.

Vivian is a founding member of this effort — and her connection to it runs deeper than most people know. Before she was a musician in this work, she was an oncology nurse. She sat with patients through some of the hardest moments of their lives. She understood what it meant to be present, to hold space, to offer comfort when there were no words left.

She also played music for Becca.

Becca — my daughter-in-law, the inspiration behind everything Acoustic Healing has become — received the gift of Vivian’s music during her illness. Vivian remembers those visits. She carries them with her.

When I think about what it means to have Vivian as part of this founding session, I don’t have words that feel adequate. She is not just a musician who said yes. She is someone who already understood, long before I asked.

And then there is me — the fourth musician. I started this whole thing and somehow ended up last on the list. That feels exactly right.

Think about the moment a patient is first admitted. Everything is unfamiliar. Cold. Someone brings them a warm blanket — and it matters so much. But there is a part of a person no blanket can reach. The fear. The loneliness. The quiet wondering about what comes next.

That is where we are going. That is what these four musicians are saying yes to.

I am grateful to Julia, Mary, and Vivian. They believed in this before it was anything more than a vision. That means everything to me.

I’ll be writing more about May 17 as it gets closer. For now, I just wanted you to meet the people.

💜 David E Villareal, RPh, CCM

🎸 www.acoustichealing.music

🌐 www.thetherapeuticguitarist.com

💼 linkedin.com/in/david-villareal-rph-ccm-35963819

🏢 linkedin.com/company/acoustic-healing

Ask any Certified Clinical Musician what they remember about a session and they will almost always say the same thing.

Not what they played. The feeling.

Vivian has been a Certified Clinical Musician since 2014. Before that — for more than 40 years — she was an oncology nurse. She knows illness from both sides of a bedside. She knows grief. She knows the particular weight of a room where someone is fighting, or resting, or letting go.

Vivian is one of the four founding musicians who will record with Acoustic Healing this May in Monterey. Last week, while we were coordinating our session, she wrote me a note from Hawaii — and in it, she described a moment I hadn't known she had witnessed.

She had played harp for my daughter-in-law Becca, when Becca was hospitalized.

"I remember knowing her from the clinic," she wrote. "What a sweet beautiful soul she was."

"I don't remember what I played. I just remember the feeling in the room — and it was profound."

She told me Becca fell asleep.

And of my son Nick, who was there at Becca's side, she wrote:

"He was the wonderful angel husband to Becca. It was the definition of Love watching his caring to Becca."

If you have ever played therapeutically at a bedside — or if you have been a patient or a family member in that room — you understand what that means. Sleep is not nothing. In a hospital, sleep is sanctuary. It is the body's way of saying: for a moment, I feel safe.

That is what Vivian gave her.

And now, more than a decade later, Vivian and I will sit together in a recording studio — and we will try to capture that. Not the specific session. Not the specific song. But the quality of presence that makes it possible for a suffering person to exhale and close their eyes.

"I feel honored to be part of your journey, my friend. No words really can describe my emotions even to this day. It hits deep in my core."

That's a Certified Clinical Musician. That's a healer. That's Vivian.

And that's exactly why this founding session matters. 💜

💜 David E Villareal, RPh, CCM

🎸 www.acoustichealing.music

🌐 www.thetherapeuticguitarist.com

💼 www.linkedin.com/in/david-villareal-rph-ccm-35963819

🏢 www.linkedin.com/company/acoustic-healing

April 22, 2026

Last weekend I flew into Denver for a family visit to Fort Collins. But I had a plan for the first two hours: a stop in Aurora to do some Acoustic Healing outreach — visiting and calling local hospitals to introduce the project.

I'd done a little research before I went. What stood out: just one cluster of hospital and healthcare campuses in Aurora covers 0.9 square miles — and there are more facilities scattered throughout the greater Denver area beyond that. The scale of healthcare in a major metro is something to behold.

For someone who spends most of his time in Carmel Valley, California, I'll admit: I felt a little out of my element.

I visited one hospital. Couldn't get anywhere. I called five more and left messages at each one. That was Friday. Still waiting.

On my flight home, I watched The Choral. I wasn't expecting it to stay with me the way it did — but this line did:

"Aren't we a culture of civilized people where they put music, beauty, and art in the center of everything they do? I think it is important."

It reminded me that this work isn't only about knocking on hospital doors. It's about a larger cultural question — one that musicians, healers, and healthcare leaders all share a stake in.

The doors I haven't opened yet don't discourage me. They remind me that the most meaningful work is still ahead.

💜 David E Villareal, RPh, CCM

🎸 www.acoustichealing.music

🌐 www.thetherapeuticguitarist.com

💼 linkedin.com/in/david-villareal-rph-ccm-35963819

🏢 linkedin.com/company/acoustic-healing

Last night I watched the movie IF with my family.

I had seen parts of it before — but never the beginning. The first few minutes took my breath away.

If you haven't seen it — the film opens with a little girl and her parents, a beautiful family full of life. And then, quietly, everything changes. Her mother gets sick. And the rest of the story follows what happens to the people who are left to find their way forward.

I couldn't look away. Because I have lived those opening minutes.

Becca — my daughter-in-law — was that mom. Not on screen. In our family. She was the inspiration, the catalyst for a journey I had no idea I would be on. Her courage in the face of cancer set something in motion that eventually became Acoustic Healing.

I cried during those first few minutes. That deep, familiar sorrow — the grief, the missing her — it all came flooding back.

But as the movie went on, something else happened. What I felt wasn't just loss. It was confirmation. Confirmation that I am exactly where I am meant to be at this point in my life.

I've written on this blog before about the corridors, the patients, the quiet moments that shaped me as a therapeutic musician. But I don't think I've ever said this plainly: all of it traces back to Becca.

I honor her. And I honor every person who is on their own journey with cancer right now — including the ones we don't always think about. The families sitting in waiting rooms. The friends who don't know what to say. The nurses and doctors and chaplains who carry more than anyone sees.

Cancer doesn't just happen to one person. It happens to everyone around them.

I know that now. I've sat with it. And it is the reason I walk into hospital rooms with a guitar — not to fix anything, but to be present for all of it.

💜

David Villareal, RPh, CCM Founder, Acoustic Healing www.acoustichealing.music

March was the month things became real.

The Acoustic Healing website — acoustichealing.music — is now fully live, indexed, and being found by the people it is meant to reach. The professional email is active. The regulatory framework connecting therapeutic music to hospital quality standards has been documented. And the founding recording session is six weeks away at New Dawn Studios in Monterey, with four Certified Clinical Musicians confirmed — acoustic guitar, harp, North American flute, and cello.

But what I did not anticipate was how quickly the right people would begin to appear.

A conversation with the Manager of Creative and Healing Arts at one of the country's most respected health systems. An introduction to the CEO of a regional organization whose mission runs parallel to everything Acoustic Healing is built on. A fellow Certified Clinical Musician who signed a contract with a skilled nursing facility — with language explicitly anchoring therapeutic music to federal quality-of-life regulations. Each of these moments arrived without being engineered. They arrived because the work is real and the need is real.

Late March also brought an unexpected reminder of why this work matters beyond the music itself. I had the privilege of attending the Hospice Giving Foundation's annual Gratitude Luncheon in Pebble Beach, where I have volunteered as a music provider for their Grief and the Holidays workshops for the past two years. Walking in, I was greeted by name by the new CEO — someone I had met only once before. It was a small moment, but it carried weight. It is a reminder that showing up consistently, with genuine care and no agenda, leaves an impression that no business card ever could.

I have spent nearly a decade walking hospital corridors with a guitar. I know what it looks like when music reaches someone in a difficult hour. Acoustic Healing exists to extend that reach — beyond the hours one musician can be present, beyond the walls of one facility, to every patient who needs it at two in the morning when the night becomes hard.

The roller coaster has not just crested the top of the climb. It has left the station entirely.

www.acoustichealing.music