Mr. Robbins, with Paul Nordoff, designed a brand of music therapy for hard-to-reach children that is now used to help people with autism, stroke and Alzheimer’s disease.

The Nordoff-Robbins method takes as its philosophical starting point the belief that responsiveness to music lives in everyone, that music has deep power as a communicative tool and that the experience of two people making music together is an inherently empathetic one.