💐 Episode Summary

A departure from previous episodes, this week’s guest Nicki Izakson doles out plenty of musical theory lessons and gets into the reality of how to contend with the grief of losing one of the most important people in your lives and how to honor them with grace and integrity. Concert violinist and behavior analyst and special education teacher Nicki is a New Yorker with so much know-how. On violin, on Beethoven and Mozart, but also on what it means to be an authentic human who is true to themselves (especially when that human is a “basic classical b****”. This episode dives into how classical music tells a story that still resonates centuries later, which is no small feat. These are the real funeral classics that you won’t want to miss learning about and hearing.  

💿 Songs Mentioned

1. Beethoven’s Symphony 7 in A Major, Op. 92 in Allegretto

2. Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor

3. “Dancing Barefoot” by Patti Smith

4. “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” by Neutral Milk Hotel

5. “We Belong” by Pat Benatar

6. “I Love Rock and Roll” by Joan Jett

You can listen to Nicki’s’s playlist on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ZmHeGUs54Eotc3Q0DxxKS

🎙 About the Guest

Nicki Izakson is a board certified behavior analyst and special educator, as well as a violinist with the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter. 

🌹 About Play This At My Funeral

Play This At My Funeral is a deeply fun, slightly macabre, always heartwarming show about the songs that shape our lives — and the ones we’d play at our funerals. Each episode invites a guest to curate the playlist for their own (hypothetical) send-off and share the stories that made those songs matter. 

In each episode, host Dinah invites a guest on to talk through the soundtrack of their life: the songs that have held them in moments of anguish, haunted them on the regular, and maybe just maybe even saved them. It’s a cozy, 45-minute-ish journey through meaningful lyrics, vivid memories, and the emotional mixtapes that mark our most human moments.

Think Desert Island Discs meets Films To Be Buried With — but with more vibes and fewer survival scenarios.

The show is created and hosted by Dinah Susan Alobeid and is edited and co-produced by Alice Marcondes. 

💜 Stay Connected

• Subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts

• Please leave a 5-star review and share with someone who’s quietly building their own “funeral playlist” (or should be!)

• You can follow the show on Instagram at @PlayThisAtMyFuneralPodcast and TikTok at @PlayThisAtMyFuneralPod and Dinah on IG @DinahSusanAlobeidWrites

• You can watch the podcast video episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WriteDanceRepeat/playlists 

• Stay in touch with Dinah by joining her Substack community at Write, Dance, Repeat

🎙 About the Host

Dinah Susan Alobeid is a writer, dancer, and VP of Communications & Content by day (not always in that order). She’s the creator and host of the newly launched “Play This At My Funeral” podcast. Her fiction has appeared in Porter House Review, Five on the Fifth, and Reverie Literary Magazine and her nonfiction and poetry can be found in Spectrum Magazine, MediaPost, and more. She lives in New Jersey (even though she’s a born and bred New Yorker) with her partner and their rambunctious toddler. 

I hearby declare that I do not own the rights to any music or lyrics played during the recording of this podcast. All rights to the music and audio belong to their respective owner(s).