close

Sarah Johnson, in Carnegie Hall work, explores music’s power in face of social ills

Sarah Johnson, chief education officer at Carnegie Hall and director of the Weill Music Institute speaks as part of the Chautauqua Lecture series Tuesday in the Amphitheater.
Sean Smith / staff photographer
Sarah Johnson, chief education officer at Carnegie Hall and director of the Weill Music Institute speaks as part of the Chautauqua Lecture series Tuesday in the Amphitheater.

Sarah Johnson grew up surrounded by music; it filled her childhood home, replacing the glow of a television screen, and there was no limit to the types of music that her parents — both artists — played around the house. When she was 10, she started playing the oboe, setting her off on a path that would lead her to The Juilliard School, and eventually to Carnegie Hall.

Johnson is now chief education officer at Carnegie Hall and director of the Weill Music Institute, the educational wing of the prestigious New York City music venue. In the 17 years she has served as director, one question has been at the heart of all of her work: “What can music do?” 

Johnson’s morning lecture Tuesday in the Amphitheater provided a few of the nearly limitless answers to that question, contributing to this week’s Chautauqua Lecture Series theme, “Exploring the Transformative Power of Music.”

A core part of Carnegie Hall’s mission, Johnson said, is to “bring the transformative power of music to the widest possible audience,” and she has spent much of her tenure at WMI focusing on that one word in particular: transformative.

“I think it sets a very high bar,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that we had a nice time at a concert; it means that our engagement with music has resulted in an evolution or a change in form.”

As Johnson and WMI set out to devise programming with the power to transform, a guiding principle emerged. She referred to it as the 360 model. The idea is that programming should be developed with more than just the target audience in mind; it should also consider the people facilitating the programs, the broader community in which the work happens, the staff at any given facility hosting a WMI program, and anyone else who may come into the fold.

With the 360 model and the drive to transform in mind on Tuesday, Johnson discussed the Lullaby Project, which pairs new and expecting parents with professional artists to create their own lullabies for their children. Ultimately, she said, this means parents are able to write love songs to their children, sometimes before they’re even born.

But the Lullaby Project has demonstrated effects that extend far beyond strengthening the bonds between parents and their newborns.

Eighty percent of brain development occurs during the first three years of a child’s life, Johnson said — if conditions are ideal. The United States ranks 33rd globally in maternal health, measured by scores in housing, healthcare and nutrition, she said, and when security is low in any of those measurements, parents are not able to devote as much time as they otherwise could to their children, resulting in the slowing of their development.

“The good news is that it’s possible to change this,” Johnson said. “Positive change is possible through collaborative efforts that are happening in a lot of communities across this country.”

Participants in the Lullaby Project consistently report higher levels of positive emotion, engagement, meaning, achievement, relationship strength and connections than other parents not involved in the project; all of those factors also contribute to higher levels of development in young children, as parents utilize their lullabies to combat outside stressors.

Johnson shared a pair of examples from the Lullaby Project. The first was a father who wrote a lullaby with his wife.

“He really loved his lullaby,” Johnson said. “When he came back a month later for the next appointment, he said, ‘I’m confused. I was talking to my friend whose wife is also pregnant. I was so excited about my lullaby, and so I asked him what his lullaby was about, and he didn’t know what I was talking about.’ ”

He was under the impression that the Lullaby Project was something all expecting parents do.

“That’s because it should be,” Johnson said.

She also shared the story of a mother named Alexis, who had struggled with depression during her pregnancy and wasn’t sure if the Lullaby Project was something she would be able to do. But she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to build a bond with her soon-to-be-born son.

The lullaby she wrote, “A Song for Nico,” ended up being performed at one of the Lullaby Project’s annual concerts, in which parents’ lullabies from around the world are presented at Carnegie Hall.

Before she was at the helm of any WMI projects, when she was first interviewing at Carnegie Hall, Johnson was asked: If she got the job, what projects would she be interested in starting? Her answer: supporting musical and compositional work in correctional spaces. That idea became a reality with a project called Musical Connections. 

“I think that expectations and assumptions are meant to be challenged,” she said. “I learned that the very first time I went to Sing Sing.”

Carnegie Hall was staging a concert at the maximum-security prison in Ossining, New York, and Johnson recalled a conversation she had with one of the inmates before the performance; the man was disappointed that the concert wasn’t going to be of classical music. Musical Connections was born.

Since then, the program has blossomed to include 35 participants incarcerated at Sing Sing over the years, each composing their own musical works ranging from operas to chamber music, rap to gospel. WMI produces four concerts at Sing Sing each year, all featuring the work of the men in the Musical Connections workshop.

She highlighted one particular participant, a man named Kenyatta Emmanuel, who — upon completing his sentence at Sing Sing — decided the first thing he wanted to do was present a concert featuring the songs he’d written, performed by some of the people he’d been incarcerated with.

The final project that Johnson discussed in her lecture was the Well-Being Concert Series, which combines world-class musical performances with elements of self-care and mindfulness to promote mental well-being through music. 

“(The series) came from conversations I was having with a colleague about how unwell everyone seems to feel,” she said. “Separate from (COVID), we’ve learned a lot about how loneliness has impacted us, how the isolation continues to ripple out, how our saturation in screens and technology, while extraordinary, may not have helped our sense of being OK in the world. And we wondered, ‘What can music do?’ ”

The concerts are very casual, with many attendees opting to sit on cushions on the floor, or even laying down. At the core of each show is research demonstrating that listening to music can reduce feelings of anxiety and depression — and the community element that comes from attending a concert with others can bring people to feel more engaged and socially connected.

“I really didn’t make the Well-Being Concerts for myself,” she said. “But boy, do I benefit from them.”

Johnson concluded her lecture by once again referencing the power of music to lay the framework for concrete change — in families, in communities, in the world. Much of that change she has seen with her own eyes, and she believes that music should be part of the answer to some of our most pressing problems.

“The challenges we face in 2024, in this deeply divided time, require complex, collaborative responses,” she said. “I hope that people will increasingly see that music can be a powerful contributor to the solutions we need.”

Tags : Carnegie HallExploring the Transformative Power of Musiclecturemorning lecturemorning lecture recapmusicNew York CitySarah JohnsonThe Juilliard SchoolWeek sixWeill Music Institute
blank

The author Jeremy Kohler

Jeremy Kohler is excited to spend his first summer covering environmental issues for The Chautauquan Daily! Originally from San Antonio, he is entering his last semester at The George Washington University where he studies journalism and mass communication. At GW, he has written for the Hatchet, GW’s independent student newspaper, and Planet Forward, a climate-focused outlet headquartered at the university. You can usually find Jeremy napping, listening to sad music, or complaining about something!