Rhythms of Resilience: An Early Look at the Robert Lee Sutherland Seminar

by | Aug 20, 2025

Since 1978, The Hogg Foundation’s biennial Robert Lee Sutherland Seminar (RLS) has been held to increase awareness about mental health concepts such as recovery, integrated health, and barriers to well-being. This year’s event offers a chance for Texans to promote innovation and collaboration among mental health care providers, advocates, consumers, and their families. Taking place September 8 & 9, in San Antonio, it will feature a keynote experience unlike any other—a powerful blend of rhythm, connection, and healing led by Grammy Award–winning percussionist Nina Rodriguez. 

The theme for RLS 2025, Growing Together: Building Capacity for Collective Wellness, invites participants to explore what it truly means to build capacity through connecting. Joining Nina in conversation on the Into the Fold podcast is Dr. Kelley Glover, postdoctoral research fellow at the Hogg Foundation and a lifelong music educator. 

Finding a Voice Through Music 

“Since I’ve been a child, music gave me a voice,” says Nina. 

Inspired by her personal experience, Nina works to bring people together by creating spaces where individuals can feel seen, heard, and valued. Using rhythm as a tool of engagement, she views drumming circles as opportunities to create safe, judgment-free spaces where participants can express themselves without rules or expectations. 

“The beauty of bringing percussion and drums into a space is the fact that we don’t really need a lesson in music,” says Nina. “All we need is a willing heart, and with that we can begin to connect our heartbeats and create this unified beat together. From there, the conversation grows musically and rhythmically.” 

Rhythms of Resilience: Nina Rodriguez, RLS keynote speaker

Kelley also knows firsthand the transformative power of music—not just as an art form, but as a tool for mental health and well-being. 

As the youngest of four and a child who stuttered, she often felt unseen and unheard. After her mother enrolled her in musical theater, however, she discovered not only her voice but her confidence. Years later, when vocal problems took away her ability to sing professionally, she turned to drumming as a new form of expression. 

“Even when I couldn’t sing, drumming helped me connect with people in another way that was just as satisfying,” says Kelley. “Vibration is everything. I’ve got to vibrate with people and connect with people, and that’s what music does for me. It’s very healing.” 

Music as Connection in the Workplace 

Kelley has brought her percussion instruments to the Hogg Foundation offices, creating moments for connection among her colleagues. Simply placing the unfamiliar instruments in a circle creates a unique invitation to play, she says 

“Drumming allows people to bring that natural curiosity that we sometimes lose from our childhood, to just play and be creative with each other and not worry about what’s right or wrong, to bring that creative spark and that energy of collaboration,” says Kelley.  

Nina agrees, noting that such shared experiences allow people to connect to their inner rhythm and help create a beautiful space where they recognize that their individual voice matters to the whole.

 

Why Music at RLS? 

While the Robert Lee Sutherland Seminar has a history of engaging both the mind and the heart, this year’s keynote promises to engage the whole body as well. Nina’s vision is to immerse attendees in rhythm, collaboration, and connection. 

“The goal,” she says, “is for everyone in the room to experience what it really feels like to make a connection.” 

Using percussion instruments as tools for connection helps people build trust and go beyond their titles and their roles, Nina says. It allows people to “trust the rhythm and use the instrument as their tool of engagement, to use it as a common language for all of us in the room.” 

Kelley feels confident that Nina’s approach will take the seminar’s theme to a new level. 

“It’s going to go from an intellectual experience to an embodied somatic experience of what well-being is,” says Kelley. “She’s going to embody that for us.  

Mental Health and the Musician’s Life 

For another perspective on musicians and mental health, check out this Into the Fold episode from 2018, Mental Health and the Musician’s Life. We speak with Patsy Bouressa, past executive director at the SIMS Foundation, an Austin-based nonprofit that provides mental health and substance use resources to area musicians and their families, and Vanessa Lively, local musician and founder of  Home Street Music, a nonprofit that empowers people who have experienced homelessness by hosting music circles, discuss the mental health needs of musicians.