Carla Tanguay has spent 25 years helping people find expression, connection and confidence through music. Her new Music Therapy Access Fund aims to make that possibility available to more people.
Sep 04, 2026
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by the Don & Beth Straus Center at Birch Bay Village.
MOUNT DESERT ISLAND—Carla Tanguay is the sort of therapist that a patient sits with and forgets that they’re having therapy. Instead, they focus on making music.
Tanguay wants it that way.
“Music meets people wherever they are,” Tanguay said. “Sometimes our goal is communication or expression. Sometimes it’s learning a new skill or regaining an old one. Sometimes, it’s simply sharing a moment together.”
That’s because underneath the music is a decade of clinical practice that’s been powerfully helping Hancock County residents do all the things Tanguay has been trained to help them do: connect, communicate, recover, and, she says, “participate more fully in the world around them.”
She’s been helping people for 25 years. A board-certified music therapist, Tanguay knows the power of music and how it helps people.
A decade ago, she founded her private practice, Modulations Therapies, which provides music therapy and adaptive music lessons. The focus is to help “people of all ages thrive and change through music,” she said.
Now, she’s doing more.
As part of her celebration of ten years of owning her own business and working with her clients, Tanguay has decided to create something new: the Music Therapy Access Fund.
The fund is a charitable initiative that will be administered through the Ellsworth Community Music Institute (now Field Note Music School).
“The fund will provide financial assistance for music therapy and adaptive music lessons to individuals, families, and local nonprofit organizations,” according to a press release.
It’s giving people a new way to learn, explore, celebrate, and remember.
“I’ve spent 25 years experiencing the power of music,” Tanguay said. “I don’t want access to this work to depend entirely on whether someone can afford it.”
Instead, she wants to be able to make a difference to everyone who needs her services.
“I’ve seen so many incredible moments in music therapy, and one of the things I love about private practice is the variety. Just in the past week, I’ve helped a 90-year-old write a requiem as a way to process his mortality, used the lyrics of a popular song as an opening to talk about bullying with a preteen, and helped a group of preschoolers practice turn-taking and sharing as they adjusted to being in a school setting for the first time,” she said.
The people she serves energize her, she said.
“I’m still surprised on a daily basis,” she said. “Music reaches people in ways other therapies often can’t. The moment when someone does something for the first time, seeing that never stops feeling incredible.”
“Over the past 25 years, I’ve seen people who have lost speech after a stroke sing words they couldn’t speak. I’ve watched nonspeaking children use music to make choices, communicate their feelings, and be a leader in group settings. I’ve seen people with dementia who can’t remember a child’s name remember every word of a song and reach for their child’s hand. I’ve watched kids who struggle through every class in school excel at a musical instrument and finally feel seen,” Tanguay said.
She’s worked with people of all ages and through multiple settings: schools, healthcare facilities, homes, community programs.
“I went into music therapy after learning about the field while doing a science fair project in high school,” Tanguay explained. “When I discovered there was a profession that blended my love of science and research, music, and helping people, I immediately knew it was what I wanted to do.”
One client recently told her, “Everybody comes in here trying to fix me. You come in here to help me.”
That resonated for Tanguay.
“I think that captures something really important about what I try to do,” she said. “I’m not there because I think someone is broken and needs to be fixed. I’m there to figure out what matters to that person, what they can do, and how music might give them another way to access it.”
She started her career in hospice care. There, she supported patients and families with pain and symptom management, grief, and memory care.
Even before that, she took the steps to make that career her focus.
“I chose a college specifically because it had a music therapy degree program and never looked back! Twenty-five years later, that combination of science, creativity, and human connection is still what I love about the work,” she said.
She moved to Mount Desert Island in 2012. She directed MDI Hospital’s adult day program and it was there that she introduced music therapy to the region.
Next she started her own business so that she could expand access to music therapy.
It’s the only music therapy practice in all of Hancock County.
“Starting my own business was definitely scary! Most people in our area had never heard of music therapy, so I had to educate people about why this work mattered and build trust in the community,” she said. “Giving up a stable paycheck without knowing whether anyone would actually hire me was pretty terrifying. But it was also really empowering. I could take everything I learned from my previous years in healthcare management and create the kind of practice I wanted to see. I could make sure people felt heard, respond quickly when they reached out, and take the time to help people figure out what they actually wanted to work on. Being able to decide what kind of experience I want people to have when they work with me has been one of the most rewarding parts of owning a business.”
All of the photos by Katherine Emery.
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Rick Osann Art.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
For more information about Modulations Therapies or the Music Therapy Access Fund, visit www.modulationstherapies.com.
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