Music and Mind Live with Renée Fleming
Renowned soprano and arts & health advocate Renée Fleming is hosting a series of Kennedy Center webinars called Music and Mind Live with Renée Fleming. The online series features the acclaimed singer and National Medal of Arts honoree in conversation with scientists and practitioners working at the intersection of music, neuroscience, and healthcare. Experts in fields such as childhood development, healthy aging, pain and anxiety management, and rehabilitation share their findings, and episodes include live Q&A from viewers.
“Research is revealing amazing things about the way arts influence human health and the brain,” said Renée Fleming. “With our working lives halted, the covid-19 pandemic has also fostered an explosion of creativity and good will. What better time to examine our need as human beings to create and experience the arts, and the basis of this in science?”
Fleming was inspired to launch the online video series by the Sound Health initiative she spearheads as Artistic Advisor to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in partnership with the National Institutes of Health and the National Endowment for the Arts. This year-round initiative brings together Artists and scientists to amplify the work at this intersection.
Following the first successful Sound Health events, Fleming created a program that she has now presented more than 40 times on her concert tours around the world, at institutions including the Yale Center Beijing, Stanford University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her goal has been to spark continuing dialogue connecting arts institutions and their audiences with local researchers, music therapists, and healthcare providers. Fleming’s work in this field has earned her Research!America’s Isadore Rosenfeld Award for Impact on Public Opinion.
May 26 – “Community of Voices, Sound and Music Perception, and a Resource for the Future”
Julene Johnson, PhD and Charles Limb, MD (University of California San Francisco); Sunil Iyengar (National Endowment for the Arts)
June 2 – “At Home with Children: Musical Tool Kit”
Miriam Lense, PhD, (Vanderbilt University Music Cognition Lab); Sara Beck, PhD (Randolph College)
June 9 – “Integrative Approach to COVID-19 and the Mind”
Deepak Chopra, MD (The Chopra Foundation)
June 16 – “Using Music for Health and Wellbeing during COVID-19”
Wendy Magee, PhD (Temple University); Tom Sweitzer, MMT, MT-BC (A Place to Be)
Subsequent episodes will include Daniel J. Levitin, the best-selling author of This is Your Brain on Music and a new book, Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives, musicologist and Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, and virtuoso percussionist and composer Zakir Hussain.
The National Endowment for the Arts is providing research and communications assistance to Music and Mind Live. “The opportunities for learning, healing, and partnership offered by this series are so important in these challenging times,” said National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Mary Anne Carter. “The National Endowment for the Arts is honored to be a resource in support of Renée Fleming in this work, advancing the understanding of the role of the arts in the fields of health and science.”
To join Music and Mind Live with Renée Fleming, go to www.facebook.com/ReneeFlemingMusic or visit www.youtube.com/TheKennedyCenter.
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