Renée Fleming and Dr. Francis Collins have long advocated for a better understanding between their areas of expertise, music and human health — both individually and as partners behind the Sound Health initiative.
Now, the two of them — world-renowned soprano Fleming and physician-geneticist Collins — will open the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week Six theme of “Exploring the Transformative Power of Music” at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater. Both highly regarded in their separate fields of science and music, their lecture may surprise the audience, Fleming said.
Collins is known for being “the one who masterminded the understanding of the genome and mapping the genome, which is historic,” Fleming said. Collins helmed the international Human Genome Project that read out the first copy of the human DNA instruction book in 2003 and, for 12 years under three presidents, served as director of the National Institutes of Health — the longest-serving presidentially appointed NIH director. When he retired, Collins was sent off with a fond farewell from President Joe Biden.
“Millions of people will never know Dr. Collins saved their lives. Countless researchers will aspire to follow in his footsteps,” Biden communicated in a December 2021 statement.
In addition to his work at the NIH, Collins is renowned for his landmark contributions involving genes; he’s discovered genes responsible for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington’s disease (a familial endocrine cancer syndrome), genes for Type 2 diabetes, and the gene that causes Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, a rare condition that causes premature aging.
But it was his love of music that led him to connecting NIH scientists with Fleming and the Kennedy Center to create Sound Health, which provides research opportunities for performers, music therapists and neuroscientists.
Fleming, who is artistic adviser to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, has been supporting the exploration of research at the intersection of music, health, and neuroscience; the NIH awarded $20 million in funding for research over five years dedicated to music and neuroscience.
“People don’t always know that there’s a connection at this point — a connection becoming stronger. I’m always surprised when I hear about types of research that I don’t expect, like that a woman with postpartum depression can improve tremendously just by singing in a choir,” Fleming said.
In an interview with Holden Thorp, the editor in chief of Science magazine, Fleming and Collins discussed their work with Sound Health, and what the two of them have learned in the process.
“We know from personal experiences that music can draw people together, help move people in a direction of going to war, like a fight song, or mourning, like a dirge, or celebrating, like a happy birthday song,” Collins told Thorp. “Those are the kinds of experiences across humanity that have drawn us together and allowed us to do things as a cooperative effort — things that single individuals might not have been able to achieve. Evolution has indicated that this is beneficial by providing the kinds of circuitry that makes music a powerful influence on who we are. We know this is powerful — music can move us in ways that are surprising and go well beyond what words alone can achieve.”
Data backs up the connection between music and the brain, too, Fleming noted in the conversation with Thorp and Collins. Math scores go up by 20% if those students also have music education at their schools. Scientists in general, Collins said, seem to have a propensity toward music.
“If you are a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, you probably play either the violin or the piano,” Collins told Thorp. “It particularly seems true in physics, but lots of scientists and other disciplines have this same connection.”
In that interview, Collins referenced a study demonstrating the connective power of music. One control group was trained with a coach to sing solo, and the other group was assigned to a choir and a choir director where they all learned together.
“The group singers were dramatically benefited by every measure of chronic pain, because many of them were elderly people whose chronic pain had gone down. Their oxytocin levels went up,” Collins said. “Their measure of generosity was particularly affected in a positive direction by having had this experience.”
In their Chautauqua lecture this morning, they will cover “the history of the initiative that we’re involved in, what we think is really working about it, why it’s important to continue, and why we’re thinking about an educational pipeline,” Fleming said.
Long a champion of the benefits of music on a person’s health, Fleming is the editor of Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness. It’s collection of essays by notable scientists, musicians, writers, artists, educators, therapists, and healthcare providers dedicated to the therapeutic effects of music, but also human evolution, brain function, childhood development, and technology.
If anyone wants to read Music and the Mind, Fleming recommends starting with “Musicality, Evolution, and Animal Responses to Music,” written by Friday’s CLS speaker, psychologist Aniruddh “Ani” Patel” because — for her — evolution was the way in which she was able to understand why music and biology, art and health, are so closely connected.
“It was really exciting to be able to help Chautauqua put together a week of various initiatives relating to arts and health,” she said. “… It’s a wonderful way to come back to do sort of a complete kind of a residency.”
