In this special episode (a live event at the Streicker Center!), world-renowned soprano and arts/health advocate Renée Fleming chats with Zibby about MUSIC AND MIND, a groundbreaking collection of essays about the powerful impacts of music on health and the human experience. The conversation covers the scientific effects of music on the brain and emotional healing, as well as the transcendent power of shared musical experiences. Renée also talks about her journey as a performer, the enriching role of music in childhood development, and her focus on advocating for the integration of arts into healthcare—from children’s hospitals to elder care facilities.

Transcript:

Zibby: This episode is Special presentation from when I interviewed Renee Fleming at the Temple Emanuel Stryker Center in person. This is the recording so that you all can feel like you were in the room where it happened. I hope you enjoy it. By the way, it's not included here, but at the beginning, Renee said saying in front of all of us, and it was beautiful and she's amazing.

So here's her bio and I hope you enjoy our conversation. It was really, really interesting. Renee Fleming is the author of Music and Mind, harnessing the arts for health and wellness. Renee is one of the most highly acclaimed singers of our time, performing on the stages of the world's greatest opera houses and concert halls, honored with the U.

1. National Medal of Arts. The 2023 Kennedy Center Honor and five Grammy Awards, she has sung at momentous occasions, including the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony and the Super Bowl. A leading advocate for research at the intersection of arts and health, Fleming launched the first ongoing collaboration between the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the U.
2. National Institutes of Health, and she has been appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for Arts and Health by the World Health Organization. Additional honors include Research America's Isidore Rosenfeld Award for Impact on Public Opinion, the 2023 Crystal Award at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal.

Well, thank you, Renee. That was so beautiful. Was that amazing? Oh my gosh. 

Renee: Thank you. Thank you. 

Zibby: If this were America's Got Talent, I would definitely Tap you up to the next round. Would we all tap her up to the next round? Yes. Yes. Tap, tap, tap. 

Renee: They always say don't sing with children or animals. It's true.

It's true. But I just wanted to tell you what happened to us just now as we sang together. So this is all science. Our brain waves aligned. We boosted the bonding hormone oxytocin and lowered the stress hormone cortisol. And my favorite, Tremorol, stimulated the vagus nerve. So that's a very popular kind of notion right now.

I'm told that on TikTok, the biggest nerve is all the rage. But I love that because science, there's just this growing body of extraordinary evidence, uh, because of technology, that's enabling us to measure all of these things. 

Zibby: I feel like this explains the popularity of the Taylor Swift Eris tour, right?

Everybody's all together. Everybody's singing all together. It's sweeping the world. 

Renee: Absolutely. 

Zibby: We all need that feeling so deeply. 

Renee: So needed. We really need it. And there aren't many places to get this right now. This idea of a shared experience is in our, it's really in our collective DNA. It's, it's something that's a behavior that's been with us through evolution since before we're, probably speech.

Zibby: Yeah, I was surprised to read in the book that singing was around before talking. We really think that's true? 

Renee: No, before language. Yeah, I do. Because if you think about it, first of all, one of my favorite statistics is that Neanderthals had the exact same vocal apparatus and apparatus and larynx that I do.

So, I mean, I wish I could hear the operas from then. That would be good. So you know, it, it is, um, it makes sense because if you imagine the sounds that would have been made to emulate animal sounds for, and they think also for seduction for many different reasons before language was developed. 

Zibby: So interesting.

Well, you talk in the book about the many, many benefits of music and sound. And you also begin by talking about where does this genetic gift even come from? Is, are you born with it or not? There was one essay where a man was playing, uh, with Santana, right? And he was doing the music in front of him with his guitar, and then he tried.

And he's like, I played the same chords, but it just doesn't sound as good. Why? If it's the same instrument and the same chords. So can you speak a little bit to how we inherit the gifts you've obviously inherited and, and honed such an amazing gift? How does that happen? 

Renee: Well, I mean, for me, it was um, I call myself an indentured servant because my parents were both music teachers and both vocal music teachers and so we all sang all the time.

I thought every family did. I, I thought you got in a car together and sang the street signs in perfect harmony. I just, I didn't know that people played sports. So you know, and they thought I would become a teacher like they did and I was on that track. And then I just kept going because I loved it. I love to being in the practice room actually.

I love the process of understanding the voice, which is so complex because it's, we sing typically with and really mostly with involuntary muscles. So it's, it's really hard to figure out, especially us because we don't usually use a microphones. 

Zibby: There was a part in the book that talked about how we all know that exercise and movement is so important.

Doesn't mean we do it, but we know we should do it. But emotional movement, feeling moved can also evoke some of the same benefits and you touched on some of these earlier. But how music and sometimes the sounds of a few simple chords can move you so much emotionally that it can improve your whole life.

Can you speak to that? 

Renee: Absolutely. I mean, first of all, it can, it can invoke also awe and the transcendence, you know, great music. If it really touches you and hits you at the right time, it can help you transcend whatever it is that you're experiencing. It's really magical and very healthy. to experience that.

Somebody has developed VR for people in elder care who are wheelchair bound, and I, they said it's, it's made a huge difference in their health and well being. And I said, well, what's on the VR? What is on it? She said, swimming with dolphins. I said, I want that. I would go, I would sign up for that. But, so, my colleague at Johns Hopkins, Susan Meg Salmon, says, we are actually feeling beings who think.

We're not thinking beings who feel. Because every aesthetic experience comes through the nervous system, which science is only kind of recently understanding the importance of it. And even rhythm travels through the spine before you hear it and are aware of it. So there's so many fascinating things that science is learning about us, really about us that can help us stay well.

Zibby: There was one essay in this anthology by Roseanne Cash who had a undiagnosed spinal cord issue and she was able to hear things at a pitch that was not Perceptible to really anybody else. And it wasn't until they figured out what happened that they could address it. So she said in one moment that nobody else could feel it in the room, but one, nobody else could hear it but one man said, well, I can't hear this pitch, but I can feel it in my body. Talk about how that,.. 

Renee: Yes. 

Zibby: How does that work? 

Renee: Well, you know, I was at a Bruce Springsteen concert the other night in Baltimore. Talk about being in great voice and I was holding a glass of water, you know, like a bottle of water, and I was shocked to realize how much it was vibrating.

I mean, it was, you could see it. You could literally see the water vibrating. And I thought, wow, we're, we're 80 percent water. So we're experiencing this in exactly the same way. We're feeling it, but just not aware of the impact that it's having. 

Zibby: And there's so many health benefits to music, and I know this anecdotally, when I had a C section and I was freaking out, they put music on, and I was like, oh, well, somehow that makes it better.

Right? But there's a way that if you listen, just hearing the music can calm you down enough that medical procedures can go better. 

Renee: Yeah, they're starting to learn to do this, uh, you know, I've gone into doctor's offices recently where they're playing soft music, and I think, um, I feel a little calmer now, but you know, listening to music or doing, really engaging with any artistic, you know, we want you all to be makers.

So I've been a neural arts fanatic this year, so I am giving myself the gift of an artistic experience every day to, this is a hard year, it's an election year, et cetera, and it's made a huge difference to keep me off my newsfeed and it's feeding me, it's literally feeding me. But I find that just allowing yourself to do this is really giving yourself permission because the health benefits are tremendous.

But the anxiety piece, so we have a real epidemic in the world. Dr. Tedros said, uh, who's, I'm an ambassador to the World Health Organization, and when I met with him in Geneva, he said depression in the, in the world is up 30%. He said, he said, I'm extremely concerned about this. And so they've started a whole arts and health arm there.

And so, in fact, I love his quote about that. He said, you know, when the wind blows, ride it, you know, so he's, we're seeing that this trend is, is really, it's not even just a field creation, it's a movement. But listening or engaging 45 minutes reduces anxiety by 25%. And having a picture in a hospital room actually would lessen hospital stays by two days on average.

I mean, there, these are the studies that are starting, this one I love too. Singing in a choir for a woman with severe postpartum depression significantly reduces symptoms. So a lot of these things surprise me. I, I think, wow, I never would have thought of that. 

Zibby: I was surprised that you had a lot of anxiety growing up and that it was stressing you out to get up and perform in public and that you had to find your own way through that because you wouldn't think so now.

Look at you, you can get up and sing this most beautiful music in the world. How did you get through that and how did music help you through? 

Renee: Well, I was innately shy. So I was an absolute bookworm as a child. I wrote music, but I was, I really didn't. I had a hard time expressing myself. And then to become a performer, which is the antithesis of that, you have to be gregarious, you have to kind of have that personality.

I did not have any of that. In fact, the reason I got started and really got off the ground was I started mimicking friends of mine who did. I'd watch how they would audition and how they would, you know, they would come out of an audition and I'd think to myself, that wasn't that great. And they would say, wasn't that fabulous?

And I thought, I think I need some of this. But it was really having a few later bouts of stage fright and also somatic pain, which is psychosomatic pain, we used to call it, as a hedge against performance anxiety that got me reading. about mind body connection, discovering that scientists were, neuroscientists were studying music in the brain, and then I just met Dr.

Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health at a dinner party in D. C., and said, why are scientists studying the brain? He said, I don't know. Well, it is the most complex known object in the universe, and we want to understand it. We have a new brain institute at the, uh, NIH, and it turns out that music is, engaging with music is incredibly complex.

It's because of all the different brain circuitry that's utilized. So that's why we're studying this. We want to know more. 

Zibby: Language and music are also quite related. This book highlighted my own daughter, who is, I have to say, a really great singer. I'm not just saying that. But she also has, not like you, but well, I don't know maybe one day. But she has a great accent when she speaks in her, you know, fifth grade Spanish class. And I feel like it's all part of the same piece of the brain, right? The ability to have the, the rhythm and melody and all of that to other things and pick that up and recreate it. And that's all part of all of this research on children and how much music can benefit kids and.

Renee: Oh, it's a, it's really remarkable. I mean, I think it's such a. It's really a tragedy that the arts have come out of public schools because, across many, many communities because of the benefits. And now we know a little bit more about it, but basically, memory, focus, you know, things that we know, discipline, all of those things are kind of intuitive.

Especially if you learn to play an instrument. In fact, the people who've studied that, who have a great deal of knowledge, There's a whole section on childhood development in the book, but they're now looking at children who sing in a choir, which I'm excited about because I want to know. Because you're right, language is very related.

Having an affinity for language is related to how much music you have as a child. You know, when you're bonding with your parents, singing songs, et cetera, but you're also developing skills and developing the brain. But the last thing, if you're playing an instrument as a kid, these, it'll change your brain after two years for the rest of your life.

and give you a bit of, we call it sort of cognitive, it's, it's a reserve that, that can really serve you later in life when you start to have issues and you'll do better than you would have if you didn't have this training. 

Zibby: So when you listen to music, is it often a Opera or do you listen to like serious hits one or like what, what do you listen to?

Renee: So I listen to, I'm a big jazz fan. So that's my kind of relaxing music and get away from it all music is if I'm listening to opera, it's probably because I'm learning something, you know, and I've been, I've sung so much music in my career, 54 opera roles, um, nonstop, uh, concert repertoire. Right now I'm touring with National Geographic, which has been very, very fulfilling because during the pandemic, I made a record with Yannick Nézet Séguin, who's music director of the Met, called Voice of Nature, the Anthropocene, juxtaposing our relationship, musical relationship to nature in the late 19th century, um, early 20th century, when poets framed every single human experience through nature.

And with now, so we had five new works on this album and it won a Grammy. So I said, okay, it won a Grammy, I'm going to take it on the road, and again at a dinner party, I'm telling you, accept all your invitations. I met someone, because I said I want to make film to go with this, and he said, oh, I know the CEO of National Geographic, I'll introduce you.

I didn't even know they were headquartered in D. C. And I had a two minute, so Call and they said, yeah, we'll make your films. And so it's a beautiful piece. I really, I'm loving doing this. 

Zibby: That does not happen to me at dinner parties. But you also, you have a close relationship and that there is a close relationship between literature and music and the way both art forms really make us feel.

And you have this very exciting project that you did already and brought back this year with The Hours by Michael Cunningham and how you brought that to life. How did that come about? 

Renee: Well, Kevin Putz, the composer, uh, and I had already worked together on a beautiful piece with, uh, The Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe.

And then we added Stieglitz to that, uh, Alfred Stieglitz, her husband as well. And it tells the story of her life with, with also with images and photographs that he took of her. It's, it's quite evocative. And we said, well, let's do an opera after this. And we came up, we were brainstorming, in fact, Paul's here on one of Paul's lists was The Hours.

I said, that's it. There's a trio there. There's a trio for three women. I had just done Rose and Cavalier and it's turned out to be the perfect vehicle for an opera. And at the Met, it was so successful. 40 percent of the audience had never been to the Met before. The first time we did it in, um, I guess two years ago.

And then the revival, which was just this past June, uh, also really wonderful. Um, so I'm, it Gelb at the Met thinking, Oh, he'll say no, he'll say no, I'll go. I'll, I'll take it somewhere. He said, Okay, I want this. So that was exciting. 

Zibby: You had essays in the book by two of my favorite authors, Richard Powers and Ann Patchett, who are just such beautiful writers and their novels have been amazing and all of that.

How did you pick which contributors to have? You had scientists, you had novelists and musicians, all different types of people. I just finished doing an anthology called On Being Jewish Now, which comes out soon and curating an anthology is not always so easy. So how did you pick which contributors and how did you balance which types of contributors to have?

Renee: Well, first of all, I mean, I had this idea because I had interviewed David Rubenstein on one of his first books on leadership and I thought, Oh, this will be great. I don't write the chapters. Other people do. This will be so easy. It took three years. It was so hard, I mean, to get everything together and as you're right, you know, kind of create the idea of it, organize it, et cetera, and get it all done.

But my thinking was to really show the breadth of the field, like kind of a snapshot as it is now. So there are a lot of artist chapters. You mentioned Roseanne Cash, but of course there's wrote Yo Yo Ma and Ben Folds and Rhiannon Giddens and, and my, the two writers. So Anne Patchett and I have been friends for a long time.

She, since Bel Canto, and she introduced me to my husband through another friend of hers, which is, I always say miracles happen. And you know, my lifestyle always made it very difficult to meet people. And then, uh, I met Richard Powers because I was a huge fan reading After the Overstory. And I said, Ann, so now I can go to Ann and say, can you introduce me?

And he interviewed me for the author's first book and, um, Louisville, Kentucky not long ago. And just the way he talked about my book was more science than I'll ever have. It was beautiful. So I wanted to have writers, um, mainly, and Anne, because she, because of Bel Canto. And I love that she sort of gave, the genesis of, of that book, um, and she has, she has a new annotated version coming out in November.

And then, uh, Richard, of course, because of the time of our singing, the book he wrote, I said, no one's written ever more eloquently about singing than he did in that book. 

Zibby: That was one of my favorite. I have to say in the whole collection where he's waking up and listening to the birds and then plays this beautiful song that we were playing backstage that if you all get the book, go to Richard Powers's chapter and just get the song on your phone.

It'll make you cry right away. And he says, how is it that just a few chords like bring tears to your eyes? It's amazing. And he somehow looped it all with the birds and the owls. And you just like. It's like, finish a thousand words and feel smarter and, right?

Renee: I mean, it's such an art. I mean, really, it's an art, writing like that.

It's just, uh, I'm in awe. I'm in awe of them. 

Zibby: And you're a big reader yourself. We were chatting about some books you're reading. Can you share some of those or some of your recent favorites you've been listening to? 

Renee: Well, I read constantly as a kid, as I said. And the minute my first daughter was born. I stopped reading, and I was so exhausted every night, and that kind of continued through my whole career until this year, Ann Patchett called me and she said, I want you to read John Blake, but don't read it.

I want you to listen. And so she sent me, she said it's Meryl Streep. I said, well, you know, they can't do that. That's going to be great. And, uh, so I discovered this sinking and kindle and realized how much I travel and how much time I actually have. And so I've been reading this year, one novel after another.

I've loved it. So recently I, I, I went crazy for Barbara Kingsolver who I'd never read. So Demon Copperhead and, and Poisonwood Bible. I just read Trust and I'm kind of making my way through the Pulitzer Prize winners just to see and Louise Erdrich and Michael Cunningham and Amor Tolles and, and I'm forgetting a bunch, but I'm just in heaven loving it. 

Zibby: Amazing. So, what is your next big project going to be? You have this book, you're touring all over, you have the Anthropocene, what's coming next for you? 

Renee: Wow. I'm not, well, so, mainly I'm, I'm, I'm really. Doing a deep dive into this advocacy piece for arts and health. It's such a new field and supporting the, uh, neuro arts blueprint in particular.

So between Johns Hopkins and the Aspen Institute, Susan McSalmon and Ruth Katz have created a vision for how the arts. Could really be embedded in society in a, in a meaningful way that contributes to health and well being that's, that's supported by science and evidence based and it's an incredible idea and I would love to see this happen.

So I'm very focused on that. I'll continue touring as long as I can because I love it. And I'm working with young artists. I, I run the, uh, co, co direct the Aspen Music Festival Opera Program. So, I'm kind of I have too many jobs right now. I'm sort of trying to rethink that a little bit because it's, I want more fun time.

Zibby: And how can we all help support the neuro arts? Like this book, it's hard to go through this book without finishing and thinking, yes, this is so important. Everyone has to know about this. What can we do to help? 

Renee: Well, there, there are policy issues that can be addressed. There are certainly going into an elder care facility or a children's hospital and saying, do you have creative arts therapies?

I really want that. If you don't have them, why don't you have them? I mean, so just advocating on your own, you know, in your own time in that way. Much of it is philanthropically supported. There are only 12 states right now that support creative arts therapies, you know, actually as part of what they're doing.

We also have public arts prescription now in several states. stage where you'd go to a doctor and they'd say, I think you're actually, I think you need to walk in the park, here's a free park pass, or I think you actually need to work with a music therapist or a, or a visual arts therapist, et cetera. So because a lot of neurological diseases, you know, whether Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, we don't have really great treatments for them yet, but we do have phenomenal initiatives.

If you've had a stroke. One session with a music therapist, if you have aphasia, could, with plasticity of the brain, could allow you to speak again because what they'll do is have you sing, this is one of my, this is my favorite thing, they'll have you sing and that part still works remarkably and then you can merge singing into speaking.

So I bet most people don't know, but they don't know about it. They don't know that they could, you know, or how to kind of recommend that. And if you have Parkinson's or have had, or MS, walking to rhythm can help you walk gracefully. It's, it's remarkable. Again, it plasticity of the brain. So there are just things like this that need to be more widely understood and disseminated.

Zibby: My friend has, her father has a lot of memory loss and she said she sings different songs to him to try to get him to remember. And he hasn't been, um, Remembering most lately, but she recently sang him the mourner's Kaddish and he remembered the whole thing just.. 

Renee: Isn't amazing My husband's aunt didn't know anyone.

She didn't open her eyes and she didn't speak at the her last year of life But if you said I'm looking she would sing the whole song over a four leaf clover perfect lyrics all of it, you know, so and in a patient who's not that far gone, it can really bring them back to life for a period of time. You can connect with them as a family member.

It's incredibly uplifting. And, and scientists and researchers, um, Connie Tomeno, who's in Mount Vernon, who's an expert in this, she worked with all of her sex, started this. She's, they're really trying to extend those moments of, of kind of being present. 

Zibby: And do you have any interest in doing another anthology or another book?

Renee: I don't think so. I mean, I, it's really hard. I find writing, you know, it, my task for this book was in the introduction alone, the editor said to me, you know, the publisher said, so what you're supposed to do is, is write your introduction so that someone wouldn't need to read the book. And I said, well, that's 41 chapters.

I mean, I tried. I really tried. I gave everybody a line. So, So that even, even that was hard and Francis Collins wrote the introduction, the foreword. So it's, I, and I would recommend that you start with evolution because it is the key. And Ani Patel is a beautiful writer at the beginning. And then go to neuroanatomy with Dan Levitin, who has a new book out called They Say There Was a Secret Chord.

He's a brilliant guy. And then Nina Krauss on sound. If you just read those three, then you can pick and choose. Because you don't have to read this whole book. And just follow your, it's long, it's long. My husband said, if this was 200 pages, it would be in airports. I said, well, I don't know about that, but, but thank you.

And then follow your interests. 

Zibby: The piece on the person who was going blind and developed more of a sense of hearing, that was also amazing. 

Renee: Isn't that beautiful? Chris Baylor, Christopher Bailey is my boss at the World Health Organization who lost his sight as an adult, um, not long ago actually, and he's so eloquent and a wonderful storyteller.

Yeah, his chapter's beautiful. 

Zibby: Great. 

Renee: Wonderful. 

Zibby: Well, I think now we have, there's a lunch for you downstairs, are there instructions or something? Upstairs. Anyway, thank you so much. 

Renee: Thanks all. Thank you. 

Pleasure. 

Thank you, Zibby. Thank you so much. Wonderful job.