Sound Health - Discussion

The Academy’s Commission on the Arts hosted a webinar featuring Sound Health, a collaborative project that brings together neuroscientists, music therapists, and supporters of both biomedical research and the arts to discuss research on the interaction of music and the brain. Sound Health is a partnership between the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and National Institutes of Health, in association with the National Endowment for the Arts.

The webinar featured four presentations followed by Q&A. Speakers: 

• Renée Fleming, world-renowned soprano and Artistic Advisor to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts;
• Francis S. Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health and member of the Academy’s Commission on the Arts;
• Deborah F. Rutter, President of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, cochair of the Commission on the Arts; and
• Sunil Iyengar, Director of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts.

Learning about Sound Health is a fitting step of the research phase of the Academy’s Commission on the Arts, which convenes diverse artists, arts leaders, philanthropists, educators, and scholars from around the country to reframe the national conversation about the role of the arts in twenty-first-century American communities.

Led by cochairs John Lithgow, Deborah Rutter, and Natasha Trethewey, the commission is engaging in learning opportunities that will help shape its priorities for the initiative. The commission’s report will include recommendations that are focused at the local, state, and regional levels, since the diversity of arts ecologies around the country precludes one-size-fits-all solutions, and will help arts advocates, educators, artists, and government officials to re-focus the national conversation on the arts around common issues.