Health and Wellness – Contributing to Medical Research

Partnerships between orchestras and scientific research centers are proving mutually beneficial. Researchers seek to deepen their understanding of how music influences neurology, physiology, and mental health, while their studies provide orchestras with valuable insights into the impact of their work. Though quantitative findings are still in the early stages, these collaborations hold great promise for advancing knowledge of music’s role in healthcare and exploring ways to enhance its benefits.

Phoenix Symphony: Music and Alzheimer’s Research Initiative

Valerie Bontrager, Director of Education and Community Engagement, came to the Phoenix Symphony with a background in science education. Her brief was to find a role for the orchestra in health care, and to develop an understanding of the field beyond testimonials for communicating with public officials. “Testimonials are huge,” says Bontrager, “but we also need quantitative results to explore the program’s impact and contribute to the larger narrative.”

Bontrager collaborated with ASU’s Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation to study the impact of live music on advanced dementia patients, their caregivers, and musicians by measuring cortisol (a stress marker) in saliva levels during weekly music events. The study, supported by the League’s American Orchestras Futures Fund, collected samples on days with and without live music. Though COVID-19 disrupted the study and formal results are pending, reports suggest calmer patient behavior and improved staff satisfaction through the day after these performances. This research, says Bontrager, both informs the Phoenix Symphony’s program design and aims to demonstrate live music’s positive impact on well-being.

Bontrager oversees the Health and Wellness performances, which include regular visits to local shelters, memory care sites, and palliative care with hospice. Phoenix Symphony musicians collaborate with healthcare staff to create responsive programs aligned with institutional goals, ensuring the music supports both patient care and the facility’s mission. During the 2023-24 season, 44 ensembles of Phoenix Symphony musicians traveled 7,950 miles to deliver 131 performances to health and wellness partners.

More Examples of Initiatives to Contribute to Medical Research

Los Angeles Philharmonic: Music Education and Brain Development

LA Phil and the Brain and Creativity Institute of the University of Southern California, along with LA Phil’s YOLA community partners Heart of LA and Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, partnered on two longitudinal studies between 2012-2020 to understand the effects of instrumental music training on children’s socioemotional, cognitive, and functional and structural brain development. Beginning at the age of six, children were assessed prior to the start of music training and thereafter using psychometric evaluations of socioemotional and cognitive functioning, EEG, and fMRI. Music participants were compared with an active group (enrolled in sports programs) and a passive control group of peers.

The findings from the research program indicate that music education induces a degree of brain and behavioral changes in developing children that cannot be attributed to pre-existing biological traits and developmental abilities. Elsje Kibler-Vermaas, LA Phil’s Head of Learning Strategic Initiatives, writes that “thus far, the results have provided support for the positive impact of music training on auditory processing development, increased engagement of the cognitive control network, and earlier development of inhibition skills, behaviorally. In addition, our music participants showed macro and microstructural brain changes.”

Lead researcher Dr. Assal Habibi has written, “we firmly believe that music and other arts are essential components of childhood development that will promote skill learning and will give children access to creative imagination in a fundamentally enjoyable and interactive context. It is the responsibility of every education policymaker to consider these findings seriously and to ensure that we keep in place the financial and educational structures that provide all students—irrespective of their socioeconomic status, ethnic, or geographic background—access to a complete and balanced education with high standards for every subject including music and arts.”

Utah Symphony | Utah Opera: Designing a Program Based on Research

The University of Utah’s Department of Psychiatry provided data on anxiety and depression among Utahns that prompted the Utah Symphony | Utah Opera to design a series of Well-Being Concerts to begin in spring 2025. The University will be a research partner on the series, evaluating the impact of the performances in real time.

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra: Partnering with Alzheimer’s Research

The Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Emory University has begun working with the Atlanta Symphony to bring groups of Alzheimer’s patients with their caregivers to ASO concerts. These are group sales, with no added costs to the orchestra. The research center is assessing impacts on these patients, with reports due this year.

Carnegie Hall: Well-Being Concerts

Carnegie Hall partners with the Social Interaction Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, to study the impact of music on individuals living with chronic, noncommunicable diseases—one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. As part of a Jameel Arts & Health Lab-Lancet research series, this work is assessing how specially designed concerts affect well-being, raising awareness of existing evidence of how helpful these kinds of concerts can be, and providing recommendations to strengthen global policy on integrating the arts with health, education, and social care.

---

---

Photo: Rainel Joubert, Community-Embedded Musician with the Houston Symphony, performs during bedside visits at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. Photo courtesy of MD Anderson.