The Chautauqua Lecture Series begins a very special week “Exploring the Transformative Power of Music” with Renée Fleming in conversation with Francis Collins, with whom she has partnered for many years to study the intersection of music and wellness.

Renée Fleming 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.S. 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 Sound Health, the first ongoing collaboration between the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Institutes of Health, and she has been appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for Arts and Health by the World Health Organization. She curated the new book Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness, a collection of essays from leading scientists, artists, creative arts therapists, educators, and healthcare providers about the powerful impacts of music and the arts on health and the human experience. Additional honors include Research!America’s Isadore Rosenfeld Award for Impact on Public Opinion, the 2023 Crystal Award at the World Economic Forum in Davos and the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal. As part of her three-day residency at Chautauqua in 2024, Fleming performs with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra in a concert that begins at 8:15 p.m. Saturday, July 27.

Francis Collins is a physician-scientist known for his leadership of the international Human Genome Project that read out the first copy of the human DNA instruction book in 2003. He subsequently served three U.S. presidents as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 2009 to 2021. His own research has led to new insights about cystic fibrosis, diabetes, and progeria, a rare disorder of premature aging. Collins’ love of music led to his bringing together NIH scientists, Renée Fleming, and the Kennedy Center to co-found the Sound Health program, providing research opportunities for performers, music therapists, and neuroscientists to work together in new and creative ways. Collins will also present the 2 p.m. Interfaith Lecture on Monday, July 29.

This program is made possible by Week Six Presenting Sponsors AHN Westfield and Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield. This program is also supported by The Donald West King, Sr. and Francis Lila Lee King Lectureship, The Barbara and Herb Keyser Fund, and The G. Thomas and Kathleen Harrick Lectureship Endowment.

Aniruddh “Ani” Patel is a Professor of Psychology at Tufts University, where he studies the cognitive, neural, and evolutionary foundations of musicality. He is the author of Music, Language and the Brain, and contributed a chapter on evolution and animal responses to music to Renée Fleming’s Music and the Mind: Harnessing The Arts for Health and Wellness. Patel will close the week for the Chautauqua Lecture Series focusing on “Exploring the Transformative Power of Music” by discussing his work in music cognition: the mental processes involved in making, perceiving, and responding to music.

At Tufts, Patel’s areas of emphasis include music-language relations, rhythmic processing, and cross-species studies of music cognition, with research methods including brain imaging, behavioral experiments, theoretical analyses, acoustic research, and comparative studies with nonhuman animals. In addition to 2008’s Music, Language, and the Brain, which won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, Patel presented a 2015 lecture series for The Great Courses, titled “Music and the Brain,” which reached a wide audience.

Patel has served as president of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, and is a member of the Brain, Mind, and Consciousness program in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Prior to joining Tufts he worked at The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, a research institute led by the Nobel Laureate Gerald M. Edelman, where he was a Senior Fellow from 2005 to 2012. Patel’s evolutionary research has been supported by fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Patel received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and his master’s degree from Harvard University, where he also earned his Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, working with Edward O. Wilson and Evan Balaban.

This program is made possible by Week Six Presenting Sponsors AHN Westfield and Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield and by The Drs. Kenneth and Cheryl Gorelick Lectureship Endowment Fund.