MASTERFUL LIFE-PERFORMANCE
WITH RON THOMPSON, PSYCHOLOGIST-MASTER
Ronald Thompson - biography
A coin was flipped to see who would get to play the old silver Holton trumpet in the Theodore Judah Elementary Band. Eight-year-old Ronny was handed the trumpet. Private lessons with
trumpet virtuoso William Peron started a year later. By age fifteen Ron was performing with Bill in the Sacramento Symphony. An early high school graduation sped Ron on to Juilliard as a student of William Vacchiano, and as co-principal of the Juilliard Orchestra. At nineteen Ron won the audition for the second trumpet chair in the National Symphony of Washington, D.C. Ron also performed as the principal trumpet at the Carter Baron Amphitheater and as a soloist at the National Cathedral.
After a move to the West Coast, Ron continued his music performance as principal trumpet with the Santa Barbara Symphony and the Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera. An audiophile recording, "Baroque Music for Trumpet and Organ," was released under the Water Lily Acoustics label. While living in Santa Barbara Ron completed a degree in electrical engineering at the University of California and worked as an engineer for General Motors Corporation.
A move to the Midwest was followed by more formal education, this time resulting in a Master of Arts Degree in Counseling Psychology from the Alfred Adler Graduate School. Ron became a Minnesota State Licensed Psychologist-Master with a specialty in performance anxiety. He worked with people in diverse "performance" circumstances including competitive high diving, amateur golf, major symphony auditions, team sports, public speaking, creative writing, music performance, medical school final examinations, and the "performance" of daily living.
Since moving to Vermont, Ron has continued in private practice as a Licensed Psychologist-Master clinician, author and presenter specializing in facilitating peak performance and the reduction of performance anxiety in a wide variety of "performance" settings.