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SEE ARTICLE ON INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR Illustration by Paddy Mills At a cozy Italian café in the West Village, waitresses ferried drinks as a singer crooned jazz-infused pop songs about love, heartbreak, and finding a soulmate. To an outside observer, it would have been impossible to know that the man singing his heart out and pounding the piano was the same person named on several 2017 lists of the highest-earning hedge fund managers, or that he’d once been the most high-profile proprietary trader at Morgan Stanley. Then again, the fact that Peter ("Pete") Muller — the 54-year-old founder of the $5 billion, New York–based quantitative hedge fund firm PDT Partners — was belting out lyrics about 13th-century Italian mathematician Fibonacci to the tune of Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito” might have given away his status as a math-geek-done-good. Such a highly public dual identity is unusual in the hedge fund industry. But for Muller, who first took up piano at the age of ten and has released three albums, striking the right balance between his passions for finance and music has been a lifelong quest — and one he has finally achieved. “I kind of do this finance thing,” Muller — backed by a three-piece band, including bass, drums, and violin — told the audience at his gig. He added that earlier in his career, he took a break to focus on music and worried that if he returned to finance, he would no longer be able to perform. “But it turns out you can do both,” Muller told the crowd through an ear-to-ear grin before belting out more love songs, with titles like “Kindred Soul” and “Scraps of Your Love.” The day after his West Village gig — at Caffè Vivaldi, one of his favorite places to play — I met with Muller at Manhattan’s Avatar Studios, recently rechristened Power Station at BerkleeNYC. (Muller, a trustee at Boston-based Berklee College of Music, recently bought the studio, which will serve as a center for the school in New York.) Some of the most iconic albums of the 1980s were recorded here, including Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” Clad in black pants and a dark-gray sweater, the sandy-blond Muller radiates enthusiasm from his lean, 5'10" frame. He rattles off details about his personal history, his hedge fund career, and his musical journey before taking a seat behind the grand piano at the center of Power Station’s cavernous Studio A to perform a piano ballad. Muller grew up in Wayne, New Jersey, the son of a chemical engineer father and a general-practitioner-turned-psychiatrist mother. After studying classical piano as a child, Muller was connected by a friend to a studio musician and jazz pianist who taught him how to improvise and introduced him to a major influence, jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. A math whiz, Muller attended Princeton University, where he played in a jazz band, with occasional gigs at small cafés. After graduation he was offered a job at a computer company in New York, but he put it off and drove to California to compose and perform music for rhythmic-gymnastics teams. The realization that he wasn’t earning enough to live on led Muller to take a job at Barra, a portfolio analysis software provider that was later acquired by MSCI. That’s where he got hooked on the math behind quantitative finance. As his career was taking off, he moved to Berkeley and formed a jazz band that played together every Thursday night. He also began to play poker competitively — a lucrative side gig that happened to be perfectly legal in California. After several years at Barra, he got a call from a recruiter at Morgan Stanley who wanted to hire him as a quant analyst. “I said, ‘Thank you, but no. I play with a jazz band every Thursday night in Berkeley. It’s really fun. I have a great life. I dress casually, and I’m not coming to New York no matter what you pay me for this job,’” says Muller. And then he made a counteroffer: Let him set up a proprietary trading outfit within the bank. To his surprise, Morgan Stanley agreed, giving him two years to make it work. Muller quickly accepted, figuring he could just move back to California if it didn’t pan out. He set up PDT Partners (the acronym stands for process-driven trading) in New York in 1992. It didn’t take long for things to click and for Muller to become very wealthy in his new job, but his personal life was floundering. “By the time 1998 came around, I was making more money than I ever dreamed of, and I wasn’t happy,” he says. Realizing he was burned out and that his music had taken a backseat, Muller asked his boss if he could take a sabbatical. He spent seven months trekking in Bhutan, kayaking down the Grand Canyon — and, most famously, busking on New York City subway platforms with an electric keyboard. Muller returned to Morgan Stanley, but after the Volcker Rule provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act prohibited banks from engaging in proprietary trading, he agreed to spin PDT out into a hedge fund. Now PDT, which counts Blackstone Group among its investors, is heading into its fifth year and boasts 185 employees. Though Muller is extremely tight-lipped about both his strategies and performance, PDT operates two statistical arbitrage funds: the Partners Fund and the Mosaic Fund. Muller landed on the Institutional Investor’s Alpha2017 Rich List of top-earning hedge fund managers at No. 25, having earned $130 million in 2016 owing to his funds’ double-digit gains that year. With the firm in good shape, Muller was able to take time off to promote his record, which included a gig in July at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Today he spends most of his time in Santa Barbara, California, where he lives with his wife and two children, and about a third of it in New York, where PDT is based. He starts each day with a half-hour each of yoga and cardio, then downs an espresso before getting to work. He sleeps six to seven hours a night; when he’s not working, playing music, or spending time with his family, he continues to surf and also creates crossword puzzles (some of which have been published in The New York Times) and plays poker. It’s an enviably balanced existence — “We’ve Never Been More in Awe of Someone’s Life Than We Are of Quant Legend Pete Muller’s,” a 2011 Business Insider headline declared — but Muller says balance is critical to his passion for both music and finance. As our conversation in the studio draws to a close, Muller wanders over to the Yamaha grand piano sitting in the middle of the room and plays a new song he has written, “Please Be Gentle with My Heart,” about the vulnerability necessary to love and be loved. “When I first left Morgan to do music, I thought, ‘Wow. I’ve got to really focus on music, and if I do that, I can’t do the finance,’” he explains before he begins to play. “I even wrote this song about being afraid of getting sucked back in, called ‘Almost.’ But I realized that in your life, you can have more than one passion. The energy you get from one can go to the other.”

SEE ARTICLE ON BILLBOARD Michael Flanagan/NCP Power Station at BerkleeNYC New York City's iconic Power Station studio (renamed Avatar Studios in 1996), the recording home for artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, David Bowie, Paul McCartney, John Mayer, Norah Jones, the Rolling Stones and, more recently, the cast album for Hamilton, has been sold in a deal that will see it taken over by Boston-based Berklee College of Music. As part of the deal, New York City's Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, alongside its sister agency the Economic Development Corporation, will invest $6 million into a large-scale renovation project, part of what Berklee president Roger Brown says is more than $20 million in philanthropic investment to save and upgrade the legendary studio on Manhattan's west side. "Renovating this amazing, historic music venue is a powerful nod to New York City as a continuing center for innovative art, culture and creativity," NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement provided to Billboard. "I commend Berklee and Trustee Peter Muller for their investments, their vision and for the public programing space that will benefit many budding and future New York recording artists." The plan for Berklee to take over the studio began more than 18 months ago, when two Berklee alums, musician and college trustee Peter Muller and engineer/musician Rick DePofi, were working a session at the studio and began discussing its impending closure, with the likeliest outcome that the building would be converted into condominiums, similar to the fate that awaited the Hit Factory a few blocks away. The two came up with the idea to find a way to finance the purchase of the building and turn it over to Berklee to both preserve its use as a commercial facility and to use it as an educational and community resource for both Berklee students and local musicians. "There is so much happening in New York, so many of our alumni want to be there," Brown tells Billboard about Berklee's initial interest in the project. "[We said], what if we had a runway where people leaving Boston could go get their feet wet, do internships, do final projects in New York, and use that as a way to increase their odds of having a sustained, successful career as an artist? And the idea of not only preserving, but re-imagining, one of the greatest and most legendary recording studios on earth, that has almost like a mystical reputation in terms of the sound quality, that really appealed to us." Among the upgrades the college plans for the building include a full renovation that will result in it being re-opened as BerkleeNYC, with the commercial studios re-named Power Station at BerkleeNYC, with each recording studio receiving a full upgrade of its audio systems as well as being outfitted with modern video capabilities that will allow for simultaneous audio and video recording. It will also include new rehearsal and performance spaces in the basement of the building, as well as a new virtual reality / augmented reality studio, and will provide free and tuition-based educational programming and other events for both the local music community in NYC and Berklee's students. "We really want to make this a place where innovators are attracted there and are doing things and collaborating with artists and creators from the music scene," says Stephen Webber, dean of strategic initiatives at Berklee and now the executive director of BerkleeNYC. "We want to make this into a hub of creative activity. We want this to be the premier studio, not just in New York, but in the world. If you're recording multiple musicians at the same time, we want you to come here. We just really endeavor to make this into a place where great music can happen." Renovations are expected to begin by the end of 2017 or early 2018, and Berklee is hoping the work will be done within 12 to 18 months, though the time frame is still flexible. For the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, which added music to its purview within the past two years, the new Power Station at BerkleeNYC serves several purposes: it saves another big-name studio from going under; provides a space for local musicians to rehearse and perform at a time when both studios and small venues are closing at high rates; and provides an educational and historic outlet, with classes, programming and museum-level installations about the history of the studio and the music industry in the city. "The idea that we can help the next generation of musicians who are currently students in New York City get free access to programming and have the programs that Berklee offers was of great interest to us," says Julie Menin, commissioner of the MOME. "When arts funding is unfortunately being cut in so many sectors, we in New York City are very focused on making sure that we provide access and inclusion to those who are often left out of the system. For many public school music students, it can be hard for them to have those opportunities for rehearsal space and for free music programming. And that's what will be provided in this space." "I think the reason Berklee has become an important educational facility is that we've been the first ones to say we need to figure out where technology is going and we need to get ahead of that curve," says Brown. "Berklee alumni have won 275 Grammys and 88 Latin Grammys and we intend to continue to train people who are going to go make a living and go change the world of music. And I think that this studio is going to allow us to continue to do this."

SEE ARTICLE ON FORBES Pete Muller is stretching the limits of math and investing. (David Yellen for Forbes.) On a recent rainy October evening, Peter Muller, 52, sits at a piano on the stage of Manhattan's City Winery, playing with the band from his third album, Two Truths and a Lie. In between songs about love, heartbreak and relationships, like his Bruce Hornsby-reminiscent "Kindred Soul," Muller describes the long, strange trip he has taken in and out of high finance. The tieless suits in attendance, from places like Goldman Sachs and Blackstone, paid as much as $1,000 a ticket to raise nearly $55,000 for the Robin Hood Foundation. And while Muller tells them of his early discovery of music, the existential crisis of his 30s, buddies he left behind in California and his family, there is a sense that many in the room just want to be in the orbit of the hottest hedge fund manager on Wall Street today. "I know you all had your choice of hedge fund manager CD-release parties," quips Muller. "Thank you for choosing ours." Pete Muller is the latest, greatest member of a growing band of hedge funds that use complex math and computer-automated algorithmic models to buy and sell stocks, futures and currencies based on statistical correlations and aberrations that can be found in the market. During 2015, when many hedge fund managers--from mighty activists like Bill Ackman to noted short-sellers like David Einhorn--lost money, Muller spun the market's volatility into gold. The largest fund of his three-year-old PDT Partners firm, which oversees $4.5 billion, was up 21.5% net of fees in the first 11 months of 2015. "We knew that Pete has a magic touch," says J. Tomilson Hill, the billionaire who runs Blackstone's $70 billion hedge fund investment unit. "I happen to be a big fan of Cézanne, and Pete is in his own way as gifted as Cézanne was." Paul Tudor Jones, the billionaire hedge fund manager, adds: "He is up there with the best and brightest--bar none." Indeed, Muller's fund is so coveted that even Wall Street's power elite are willing to effectively grovel to get in on PDT's action. Many hedge funds stipulate that limited partners remain "locked up," or prevented from redeeming funds, for a predetermined period, usually one year. PDT is the opposite. Its biggest investor, Blackstone, actually agreed to be locked up for no less than seven years--in return for Muller's assurance that he would not kick it out of his biggest fund for the same period of time. Others requested the same lockup restrictions--and were refused. Even more astonishing is Muller's 3% of assets under management fee, and performance fees that rise to 50% of profits for benchmark-beating performance, compared with the already maligned industry standard of 2-and-20. "Our goal is to be the best quantitative investment firm on the planet, but not in terms of number of assets, in terms of quality of the products," says Muller in his first interview since opening his new firm. "To take money out of the market with as little risk as possible and build a place people who are smart are drawn to." Muller's niche formula has also let him take plenty of money out of the market personally: Forbes estimates that in the last three years alone he's made $200 million before taxes, including gains on his own capital. It's mid-November 2015, the U.S. stock market has given back all of its gains, and hedge fund managers around the globe are wringing their hands in anticipation of sending out another batch of disappointing investor letters. Muller is sitting in his Manhattan office. He is wearing a gray sweatshirt and jeans and has a Zen-like calm. His research chief has just left his office after telling Muller about a promising finding that could lead to the improvement of one of PDT's main models. "When people buy or sell in a desperate or hurried fashion, it tends to be helpful to us," says Muller, who is otherwise tight-lipped about what has gone right this year. There are two screens in Muller's office: a flat-panel display on his desk showing the movement of his hedge fund's positions and a much larger screen on the wall that displays a real-time high-definition stream of the surfing beach at the foot of his house just north of Santa Barbara, Calif. When he's at PDT's headquarters in New York City and the waves are big, Muller sometimes yearns to be hanging ten. Luckily this doesn't happen too often, because Muller spends two-thirds of his time at his California home, where responding to "surf's up" is a regular ritual. Muller may not appear to be a workaholic like many other Wall Street titans, but he is obsessive about his algorithms and problem solving, and he can get lost in deep thoughts for hours, days. His fear of burnout is real--he already dropped out of Wall Street once in 1999--and diversions like music and surfing are almost a necessity. Pete Muller and his band of quants at PDT. Pete Muller and his band of quants at PDT. (David Yellen for Forbes) Muller grew up in suburban Wayne, N.J. His father was an electrical engineer and his mother a psychiatrist. He was good at numbers and loved music. At Princeton he studied math and played in a jazz band. After graduating, he headed to northern California to play music for rhythmic gymnasts and, figuring he had to pay the bills, eventually went to work for BARRA, a pioneering research firm that catered to quantitative financial firms. In 1992 he joined Morgan Stanley in New York as a proprietary trader to see if he could use math and computers to trade himself. Some of his investment banking colleagues were skeptical about the new math guy in the office. He called his group Process Driven Trading, or PDT. "I wanted to win and prove myself," Muller says. Nobody outside the bank knew it, but for a long time Muller was Morgan Stanley's supersecret weapon, making big contributions to its earnings each year, hidden in the firm's income statement under "principal transactions." Muller was able to carve out his own quiet area at Morgan Stanley's Manhattan headquarters, where his team of math nerds could dress casually away from the bank's testosterone-fueled, high-octane trading hordes. Muller became intensely focused on figuring out patterns that could help him beat the market. It was thrilling and exhausting. He thought and talked about it all the time--couldn't even sit through a Broadway show without stressing over it. "He is really smart, but a lot of smart people get lost in theory," says Kim Elsesser, a computer programmer and mathematician from MIT, and Muller's first key hire. "He also has very high expectations of himself and other people." As Muller gained success and autonomy at Morgan Stanley his behavior became somewhat erratic. He detached from the office at a second home in Westport, Conn. in part because the pressures of work were overwhelming. His mind became so overloaded with mathematical formulas that he could no longer play music. Crossword puzzles became an escapist obsession; he even created them for the New York Times. By 1999 Muller started to feel like he could no longer find happiness on Wall Street. "I was out of balance personally," Muller says. He went on sabbatical, rediscovering his love of music partly by busking in New York subway stations and sojourning in far-off places like Bhutan. After returning in 2000 he spent the next several years essentially as an advisor to the fund he created, PDT. Muller today likens it to a kind of executive chairman position that left him time to do other things, such as practice yoga and produce two music albums with titles like Just One Lifetime. He also met his wife, Jillian. The soul-searching lasted about seven years, and Muller says it sent his trading operation into a period of stagnation. Muller then rolled up his sleeves and came back full-time to PDT in 2006. Unfortunately his return just about coincided with the quant meltdown of 2007, when the precipitate drop in subprime mortgage securities triggered deep losses for many firms. Under pressure from Morgan Stanley, Muller was forced to liquidate part of his portfolio. "Morgan Stanley Star Is Among Those Battered; No Time for Music Now," the Wall Street Journal 's front page blared. As with many on Wall Street, the financial crisis changed the game for Muller. He had produced the kind of returns that would have made him a billionaire had he been an independent hedge fund manager. But working for Morgan Stanley always appealed because he didn't have to worry about raising cash, appeasing clients or back-office details. It was plug and play. He couldn't invest his own money in PDT, but he was well-paid, receiving a cut of his unit's profits, and could singularly focus on solving market puzzles. There was also the tricky issue of the intellectual property Muller developed but Morgan Stanley owned. But 2008 exposed the danger of being dependent on one client, namely Morgan Stanley. It also gave birth to the Volcker Rule, a piece of legislation designed to make it impossible for a proprietary trader like Muller to work at a bank like Morgan Stanley. Over the next few years Muller engaged in on-again, off-again negotiations with the Wall Street firm about their operating arrangement. "We preferred to stay together, but as the Volcker Rule emerged it became clear that would not be permitted," says Jim Rosenthal, Morgan Stanley's chief operating officer, who led the last round of negotiations with Muller. "Sadly, this was a business that was a steady source of revenue and profitability and did not pose significant risks to the firm." In the end Muller would manage Morgan Stanley money until the end of 2012 and control the intellectual property Morgan Stanley was no longer permitted to use. Under the terms of the deal Morgan Stanley would get a cut of the fee revenue of the new, independent PDT for an undisclosed period of time. On New Year's eve 2012 Muller transferred all of his group's investment positions from Morgan Stanley to PDT Partners. It wasn't only the positions and intellectual property that came with him--so did every single member of his 80-person staff. Invigorated, Muller went to work, increasing his new business and nearly doubling his employees. "It feels great to have your own place," says Muller from his office on the top floor of a midtown Manhattan building formerly occupied by Random House. "I never felt like I had to have my name on the door, but I didn't own it before, and in hindsight I didn't recognize the psychological impact of that." In order to make his mathletes more comfortable Muller has had special glass walls constructed that are slightly curved to deflect sound and maintain the quiet workplace needed for concentration. Outside those quiet areas there are Ping-Pong and foosball tables near the kitchen and meeting rooms with whiteboards covered with mathematical formulas. Employees never wear suits; they run book clubs and organize poker nights that Muller sometimes attends. (He has made a final table at the World Series of Poker.) Not much is known about Muller's black box models. He traded using two different strategies at Morgan Stanley that have morphed into the two hedge funds he now runs. The PDT Partners Fund is a statistical arbitrage fund built on models that have never had a down year. The $3 billion fund was up 21.5% in the first 11 months of 2015, and given its high fees, its gross returns were running at about 40%. Since inception in 2013 PDT Partners Fund has produced annualized net returns of 18.5%. Another fund, $1.5 billion Mosaic, has a longer time horizon and had produced returns of 10.5% net of fees through November of last year and 8.5% annualized in three years. PDT also has a Fusion Fund, which allocates cash between PDT Partners and Mosaic. Returns like that are beginning to rival the long-reigning king of quants, Renaissance Technologies, known for market-defying consistency and for producing a net worth of $14 billion for its professorial founder, James Simons. While Muller is not yet even a billionaire, some say he is the new Simons. Like Renaissance PDT is a Ph.D. farm, with 35 researchers who spend most of their days developing trading algorithms. They are organized into five teams by the asset class and time horizons they work on. Some work on futures contracts with longer holding horizons while others toil with statistical arbitrage strategies that trade stocks over a medium time horizon of several weeks. Most efforts to come up with new models tend to start with two-week-long deep dives but can grow into research projects that last a year. PDT has one open problem today that its people have worked on for four years. Fun & Games: Muller's crossword puzzles have a loyal following. Solving this one will reveal another puzzle regarding a famous guitarist. Answers can be found on pmxwords.com. Fun & Games: Muller's crossword puzzles have a loyal following. Solving this one will reveal another puzzle regarding a famous guitarist. Answers can be found on pmxwords.com. And while most Wall Street research analysts expect their best ideas to find their way into firm portfolios within weeks or months, PDT takes an academic approach to portfolio change. Researchers know that their models may not affect returns for two years or more. In fact, PDT is still using models today with concepts that were initially developed 15 years ago, but models do decay over time and need to evolve with the market. "We are more intent in building a group of Ferraris than a bunch of Toyotas," says Tushar Shah, research chief at PDT. Finding the right minds for Muller's model-making is almost as hard as decoding statistical arbitrages hidden in markets. Big data and sheer computing power have become a driving force in PDT's business model. Like other quants, PDT routinely competes with tech firms for leading programmers and mathematicians. It is now hiring more computer engineers than mathematician-researchers. Experts in machine learning are in high demand, so poaching talent from the likes of Google and Microsoft has become popular of late. It's not always the eye-popping first-year salaries of several hundreds of thousands of dollars that hook new Ph.D. recruits. PDT researcher John Sun, 30, was finishing up an MIT Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science when he got an e-mail from Eunice Baek, Muller's longtime partner who manages recruiting. Sun would frequently get these sorts of e-mails and ignore them, but this one pulled him in. It said people at PDT like Lord of the Rings, science fiction and board games such as Settlers of Catan. Like most PDT job candidates, Sun was flown to New York for a 36-hour interview on the second Saturday of November at PDT headquarters, where Muller and his partners tried to determine if Sun had the smarts and was someone with whom they could spend a lot of time. The guts of the recruiting weekend include a modeling interview and then collaborative algorithmic-based problem-solving games in which candidates are separated into small teams that Muller watches closely. PDT has a 3.5% turnover rate, and while the hours are not grueling, the work is demanding--trying to solve stock market puzzles often ends in failure. "I want their shower time because in the shower they are thinking about things that get them to solve the problems," says Muller. While Muller is supersecretive about the details of his models even to limited partners, who seem to invest on faith--he is adamant that PDT does not engage in ultra-high-frequency trading. Ferreting out small market inefficiencies is core to PDT's strategy, and what is also clear is that, for Muller, the more trading going on in markets the better. "There is a limitation on how much volume we can trade naturally built into our systems," Muller says, adding he will almost certainly return some capital to his investors at the end of 2015, as he did in 2014. Trust in Muller's machines is paramount, and he rarely intervenes manually, even when jarring upheavals temporarily defy his model's predictions. Spending seven months of the year with a surfboard at the ready or composing in front of a keyboard, instead of obsessively staring at a CNBC ticker, probably gives Muller's PDT an advantage. Instantaneous information and constant volatility are the new reality of global markets. Whether it is index investing or robo-advisors, the discipline and brainpower of machines are winning on Wall Street. The rise of the quants is just beginning. "It will get harder, but we are prepared, and as information becomes more widely available and computing power increases, the strength of our models will improve," Muller says. "Quantitative investing is the best way to manage money, period."

SEE ARTICLE ON PSYCHOLOGY TODAY A discussion of Peter Muller frequently includes terms such as “math whiz” or “quant legend.” These labels are well-earned: For decades, Muller has developed quantitative, model-driven strategies to guide investments, most recently as the founder and CEO of Process Driven Trading (PDT) Partners. But Muller is reminding the world that there is another label that should be linked to his name; namely, musician. And with his new album, Two Truths and a Lie, he is making a statement: Having multiple passions is not only possible, but also one of the keys to a fulfilling life. “So, my theory of life is if something turns you on, and it’s interesting, and you throw yourself into it, and you learn to get better at it and keep getting better at it — that feels great,” he told me. “And the people that I’ve known in my life and have read about that are the most alive, are people who live that way.” At an early age, Muller developed an interest in mathematics and problem-solving. “I’ve always loved numbers, puzzles, games,” he said. “I loved competition.” Muller’s love of math brought him to a career in finance. “In finance, I used math to figure out how to invest money in an optimal way. When I got the chance to build a group that traded on Wall Street using mathematical models, I jumped at it. It really required an incredible amount of concentration and single-mindedness — just an obsession — for six or seven years while building this group and figuring out how to make money consistently in the markets,” he said. But math was not the only love Muller discovered early on. He developed a passion for music that began with classical music and then grew to include jazz and improvisation. He described the many levels of beauty that he finds in music. The first is the ability to express one’s emotions and connect with others. “When I play, as you play, you’re trying to channel your soul. You’re trying to get from the deepest place inside you and express that. You’re trying to communicate a feeling, strong emotion, in a way that will touch somebody who’s listening to it and have them get it … . There’s no better feeling… . It’s feeling like you’re not alone in the world. You’re connected to something, and it’s much, much bigger than you,” he explained. “And that’s music at its best.” Research has shown that music can indeed improve well-being by helping someone understand, rather than suppress, negative emotions; suppressing emotions such as sadness or anxiety can actually worsen these negative experiences. In contrast, expressing emotions through activities such as writing down one’s feelings can improve mood and reduce stress responses. These positive effects of music have been shown to improve mental and physical health. For example, research has shown that adding music therapyto treatment as usual for people who suffer from schizophrenia improves both symptoms and social functioning. Additional studies demonstrate that listening to or playing music can improve symptoms of depression, anxiety and chronic pain. For Muller, there are parallels between what is being experienced playing music and doing math. In fact, research has shown that “beauty” in mathematical models may have the same effect on the brain as other forms of “beauty,” such as art or music. One study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the activity in the brains of 15 mathematicians when they viewed a mathematical formula that they had rated as “beautiful,” “indifferent” or “ugly.” Results showed that the experience of mathematical “beauty”correlates with activity in the same part of the brain as the experience of beauty derived from other sources. Muller explained that music and math can draw him into a state that can be considered flow. Flow is a meditative, mindful state of “effortless concentration,” a complete immersion in experience. And flow may have psychological benefits. Studies demonstrate that mindfulness therapy programs have been effective in improving symptoms of depression and anxiety. Muller describes his experience of flow: “… you’re only aware of, and you’re completely connected to, the thing that you’re doing. And your brain is open … . You have no concept of time. You just dive deep into the problem and focus all of your neurons — or however it’s working in your brain — on this particular thing.” Unfortunately for Muller, success in finance was accompanied by a loss of connection with his music. And this caused Muller to feel that his life was not in balance. “I achieved the mastery that I set out to achieve [in finance]. And I wasn’t happy … during that time, I kind of lost the music. I just said, you know, ‘I like music, but it’s not that important.’ That was one of the reasons I burned out and took a break.” Like with many things in his life, Muller threw himself back into music in an attempt to restore balance. “I went back, and I said, I’m really going to dive into music, so I did. And when I rediscovered the music, I thought, ‘Well, this is great. Well, maybe now this is the next phase in my life. I’ll just do music. I didn’t move away completely, but I started focusing intensely on music, and then when I met my wife, she looked at me and said, ‘Wow, you’re being really intense about surfing and music, but it seems like you miss the other stuff you did.’ And I found a way to go back and keep that balance and do both,” he said. “To me, they speak to different sides of me, but it’s been a journey to have both of those parts be there and be really important.” Part of what has allowed Muller to have this balance is that he has learned how both to be curious and critical about his work as a way of improving his work without hurting his self-esteem. In fact, for Muller, this vulnerable state is the epitome of love. “[T]he reason you love is that when you love, you’re vulnerable, and being vulnerable is the best state to learn in. ... You have to be open. I think if you want to critique somebody, critique yourself. If you have that place of love, it becomes safe and creates trust.” Muller has created this community of trust around him, “I started this songwriting circle in New York, and we met every week in my apartment for about five years … . We’d get together, and play songs that people had written that past week and critique each other. And that process for me — having that built-in audience and that community encouraged me to write a tremendous amount. And with that songwriting circle, we ended up creating an environment where there was a lot of trust. So you knew that you were safe there.” Muller further extends his musical experience to help others in need. He works with many charities, including a recent show with the Berkelee College of Music to raise money to provide music lessons and instruments for underprivileged children. Moreover, proceeds from his recent album, Two Truths and a Lie, will be donated to Charity: Water, a non-profit that provides safe drinking water in developing nations. “I’m lucky to be in a position that I’m doing music, because I love doing it. Everything I make from music, I give away, so I’m not doing it for money. I’m not doing it for fame. I don’t aspire to be famous. I would love to connect with a bunch of people, and that’s really cool. The more I connect, the more people that dig my music and give me feedback, the more I’m inspired to play and I love playing,” he said. “[I’ve been] giving money away for a long time … . Raising awareness and raising money, that’s a win all around.” Muller will continue to pursue his varied passions — and not just music and math. “I have a few other interests that I’m equally as serious about. I create crossword puzzles. I’ve published a whole bunch in the New York Times, and I have my own monthly contest. I love to surf, and I surf a lot.” And he will continue to be driven by his passions. “It’s always about energy and figuring out what your deepest truth is. If you are excited and passionate about whatever you’re doing, just keep doing that. Because you’re excited and passionate about it, you’re getting better at it, and it will give you more energy and will be a feedback cycle. Keep doing it until that feedback cycle stops and you will end up … becoming remarkably successful.” “If you basically say, ‘Well, I have to work. I guess I have to do a good job, because I need to get money to do the things that I want to do,’ you’re going to end up getting a job that you don’t like. The question is — ‘I’m passionate about a bunch of things. How do I figure out how to do those passions and make money there?’ That’s not a bad way of looking at things. It’s amazing, when you have that energy and that spark, people respond to you, they want to be around you, they want to be, like, how can I help you? I want to be a part of it.” “The more energy that you have, the more drive, the more passion, the more giving you are — and Scott Harrison, this guy who runs Charity: Water — has exactly this skill set. The more you have of that, the more you’re going to have people that are like, ‘Wow, how do I help you succeed?’” “That’s kind of the secret of life.” Muller recognizes that his path has not been linear, and he feels better about being able to restore balance if needed. “When people don’t succeed, and they don’t go forward, it’s usually because of something in themselves — the way they’re looking at the world, something they haven’t learned that they have to get through.” “So, for me, my path has been great. But there definitely have been times when I hit a block, and I had to reset. For me, I forgot that the music was an important part of me. And I allowed myself to get obsessed. When I go back and think about it, I wonder, and one of the guys that works for me asked me this once, and I still wonder about this. He said, ‘You talk about balance all the time, but you really didn’t accomplish what you accomplished without getting obsessed. So, isn’t it important to get a little obsessed?’” “And I’ve come to completely agree with that … . You can get overly obsessed, too, and you have to figure out, ‘OK, what’s the right level?’… . If you’re self-aware, you can say, ‘Wait a second. You know, it’s been a few weeks, and I’m not really having fun. There’s something stuck, there’s something wrong, and then you dive deep, and figure out what it is. All of a sudden you unlock that energy, and you’re back in that place. And I think that’s the main thing I would say: The younger you are, the more energy you have. You have a tremendous amount, but you don’t realize that to accomplish things, you have to focus it and harness it, and give to the universe.” “And then the universe gives back to you.” Michael Friedman, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in Manhattan and a member of EHE International’s Medical Advisory Board. Follow Dr. Friedman onTwitter @DrMikeFriedman and EHE @EHEintl.