Renée Fleming to Launch MUSIC AND MIND LIVE, a New Webinar to Explore the Impact of Music and Arts

On Tuesday, May 19, Renée Fleming will launch Music and Mind Live with Renée Fleming. The online series will feature Fleming 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 will share their findings, and episodes will 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?"

The first 45-minute weekly episode will premiere Tuesday, May 19, 2020 at 5:00 pm EDT as a live event on Fleming's Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ReneeFlemingMusic). The Kennedy Center will also feature the live-streamed events on its Facebook and YouTube channels, as well as its website at www.Kennedy-Center.org/soundhealth, where users can re-play the videos on-demand. The debut episode will feature special guest Dr. Vivek Murthy discussing a topic of special urgency today, "Music, Loneliness, and Isolation," and his best-selling book, Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World.

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.

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 beginning Tuesday, May 19 at 5:00 pm (EDT)

Music and Mind Live with Renée Fleming- First Scheduled Episodes

May 19 - "Music, Loneliness, and Isolation"

Vivek H. Murthy, MD (former US Surgeon General, author)

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.

Photo Credit: Jennifer Broski