I don’t want anyone to confuse this particular post an an endorsement of Dr. Richard Cox’s work with musicians who have injured their lips. I really don’t know much about him, most of what I can say comes from this video. Take a look and see what you think.
He makes some statements in there I agree with and he appears to have some background in medicine. In fact, he claims doctorates in medicine, psychology, and theology (and those don’t even include his three honorary doctorates).*
His academic work was in the field of psychology and based on the synopsis of the book he wrote and his discussion here I gather the bulk of his work is more as a motivational speaker, rather than as an embouchure expert.
Cox does have a YouTube channel, but I didn’t find one for his consulting company. There’s another video titled Help Following Surgery where he interviews a trumpet student who had reconstructive surgery on her jaw. It’s mostly about keeping a good attitude but I do like one part where Cox offers that coming back to playing after surgery it’s common to play in a way that is easy, but not necessarily correct for long term results. I would like to hear more about what he considers correct. Sometimes when I don’t hear something I would consider important (e.g. correct embouchure form and how this can be different for different players) it raises a red flag that perhaps that person isn’t as knowledgable about embouchure as he is trying to present.
I don’t have enough information at this point to be able to recommend Dr. Cox for specific embouchure issues, but if you happen to be near Colorado Springs (I think this is where he is based) and need some help it might be worth investigating him. If you do, let us know about your experience and whether you’d recommend Cox to other players with similar problems.
* It’s not impossible for someone to earn three terminal degrees in different fields, but it strikes me either that some of those degrees include his honorary degrees or perhaps that one or two of them come from uncredited institutions. Then again, he could be brilliant and diligent enough to have earned them all honestly. It does strain credulity a bit, though, and is another red flag for me.
