Today's Featured Biography

 
Brian McCorkle

After, oh, several career paths and detours, I received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Boston University in 1999, where I became a research professor at the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation. Later I was hired by Boston University's Danielsen Institute to be the founding Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology. Currently, I am happily retired, although I continue to teach occasionally as an adjunct professor, and now I spend much of my time teaching Buddhist meditation and psychology.

I married my college sweetheart days after our last exam, and we have a wonderful son, Brendan, who graduated college in 2003 and is CEO of a hi-tech startup in Philadelphia. We also have 4 grandchildren.

That marriage ended in the mid-80s, and in 1991 I married my current spouse, Gail Steketee, a professor and eventually Dean of the Boston University School of Social Work. We live in a Boston suburb in a lovely 1840's Greek Revival farmhouse (very similar to the one I grew up in on Rt. 31). For many years we performed vintage ballroom dancing (from 1850-1914) with the Commonwealth Vintage Dancers, and helped run a dance camp in Newport, RI, every summer for 25 years. Also, we're insanely devoted to our dogs, having had a succession of 3 Leonbergers.

What happened to music, you ask? After getting a B.Mus. in Music Performance from SUNY Potsdam, I moved to Boston because of my first wife's graduate school plans, and after my son was born the demands of a full-time day job and parenting led me to put the trombone away back in 1980. In my late twenties and early thirties I performed for a while as a folksinger/songwriter, did some Baroque and folk gigs on recorder, was a church organist/choir director, sang and soloed with the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, and filled in as a ringer for several local chorales (everyone needs a tenor who can sightsing!)

Late in life I began serious study of classical piano, and completed the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto) curriculum through Level 10, including participating in an honors recital at Carnegie Hall. I enjoy playing recitals and informal gigs at senior centers, and play dinner music several times a year at the Boston Symphony Orchestra Cafe (the BSO's in-house restaurant for pre-concert meals). I've also begun composing piano music.

VIEW ALL BIOGRAPHIES