Jon Batiste, Jon Faddis & BEAUTIFUL Cast Members to Perform at 2014 What A Wonderful World Awards, 9/22

The recipients of the 2014 "What a Wonderful World" Award are Jon Batiste, Aimee Telsey, MD, FAAP, Ann Marie Dassler, RN, FNP, MSN, and Gweneviere Mann, announced Joanne V. Loewy, DA, MT-BC, LCAT, Director of Mount Sinai Beth Israel's Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine

The honorees will be feted at a jazz concert with a cocktail reception and silent auction on Monday, September 22, from 6 to 9 pm, at The Cutting Room, 44 East 32nd Street in Manhattan. With dancer-choreographer Mercedes Ellington and actor Kevin Bernard presiding as co-emcees, the annual awards ceremony celebrates health care advocates, music legends and patients. Performances by honoree Jon Batiste, renowned jazz trumpeter Jon Faddis and the cast of the 2014 Tony-winning Broadway production of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical will be among the evening's musical treats.

Jon Batiste is a remarkable musician whose artistry, described as "peerless," melds seamlessly with an uplifting musical vision which he calls "social music." He comes with an equally impressive musical pedigree rooted in New Orleans, LA. He attended the prestigious New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and received a Master's degree in Music from The Juilliard School. At age 27, he is among 30 under 30 most influential people in the art world. He has collaborated with renowned musicians and regularly tours with his band, Stay Human, and has played sold out shows at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center and around the world. Jon and his band recently finished a European tour and continue their North American tour at major festivals including Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits. He currently serves as Artistic Director at Large of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem where he curates programming and educates audiences of all ages and backgrounds.

Dr. Telsey is a neonatalogist who has been with Mount Sinai Beth Israel since 1988. She is the Associate Director, Division of Newborn Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. A graduate of Brown University, Dr. Telsey did her postgraduate medical residency in pediatrics at Schneider's Children's Hospital/Long Island Jewish Medical Center, and was chief resident at Queens Hospital Center/LIJ. She completed a fellowship in neonatology at Babies Hospital/
Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and the University of California in San Diego, and an additional fellowship in extracorporeal membrane oxygenation at UCSD Children's Hospital and Health Center. She is author of various articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Ms. Dassler is a nurse practitioner whose interest in music therapy evolved from the experience of caring for a pediatric patient five years after caring for her as an infant and the realization that music memory was so profoundly powerful, comforting and integral to the child's experience as a newborn. Ms. Dassler is a graduate of the New Rochelle Hospital School of Nursing and Mercy College, where she earned a bachelor's degree in Psychology. She received her MSN and FNP from Pace University. She has been with Mount Sinai Beth Israel since 1992 and in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit since 1994.

Ms. Dassler and Dr. Telsey were co-authors with Dr. Loewy of a major study on music therapy in the NICU that was published in the April 2014 issue of the journal Pediatrics.

Honoree Gweneviere Mann is a musician who has participated in the Armstrong Center's music therapy program since 2012, following surgery for a benign tumor in her brain's frontal lobe. The tumor was successfully removed but she suffered a stroke during the operation which resulted in severe short term memory loss. She has been using music to learn coping techniques to aid her memory and attention deficits.

In addition to an evening of jazz, a silent auction will feature musical, sport, entertainment and travel treasures that will benefit the Armstrong Center's clinical services to those in need, including musicians and children with HIV, asthma as well as adults with cancer, COPD and heart disease. The Louis and Lucille Armstrong Music Therapy Program at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, established nearly two decades ago as part of the jazz legend's legacy, was the foundation for the expanded programs of The Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine, created in 2005. The Center also provides specialty treatments for children with developmental disorders such as attention deficit and pervasive developmental delays.

The Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine is made possible by a generous gift from the David B. Kriser Foundation and through the estate of John H. Slade, directed to Beth Israel from the late hospital trustee Richard Netter, and with additional support from the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation. The Louis Armstrong Center is located at the Mount Sinai Beth Israel Phillips Ambulatory Care Center, 10 Union Square East, between 14th and 15th Streets in Manhattan.

For more information about the "What a Wonderful World" Awards jazz concert and the programs and services offered by the Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine, please call 212-420-2704 or check out its website at www.musicandmedicine.org.