Carnegie Hall

Listening to live music can be enjoyable and uplifting, but is it also good for your health? The newly published Beyond Performance: A Mixed-Methods Study(opens in a new tab) of Carnegie Hall’s Well-Being Concerts suggests it just might be!

Skeptical? One of the study’s authors—Ian Koebner, PhD, strategic advisor for health and wellness programs at Carnegie Hall—once was too. “I used to think, ‘Why art?’ It’s a little precious,” he admits. But as an undergraduate at Wesleyan University in the late 1990s, he had an experience that changed his mind as well as his purpose.

“I was part of a conflict-resolution program for six months abroad,” he recalls. “At that point, I had no particular interest in the arts. I was focused on politics, but I formed close relationships with artists who were using their creative expression and talents to navigate deep divisions and difficulties, and that really reframed for me how impactful an artistic intervention could be. It inspired my curiosity about the potential impact that aesthetic experiences can have.”

Because of the collective trauma of the pandemic and its aftermath, the intersection of arts and wellness has become a hot topic. So it’s no surprise that the idea for Carnegie Hall’s Well-Being Concerts was born during the shutdown.

“Pre-pandemic, we had been working across a lot of different spaces: correctional facilities, health care settings, schools, community organizations,” explains Sarah Johnson, chief education officer and director of the wide-ranging education and social impact initiatives of the Hall’s Weill Music Institute (WMI). “In some of our evaluation work around that programming, we started to see well-being benefits emerging. Then COVID happened and we all went off to be alone on screens. It was clear during the pandemic that—aside from the public health crisis—so many people did not feel well. So we started to wonder, ‘When we’re finally able to come back into a space together, how might we create concerts specifically designed to support people’s well-being, individually and collectively?’ That really was the anchor question that led to these concerts.”

For the inaugural season of Well-Being Concerts, which launched in early 2023 and was the focus of the Beyond Performance study, Johnson, Koebner, and their colleagues concentrated on two core constituencies: health care workers and individuals impacted by the justice system. Creating a comfortable, intimate, and welcoming environment was key, so traditional concert rules were reimagined. Instead of rows of rigid chairs, audience members were seated in a circle on cushions or floor mats and invited to recline and remove their shoes. A host greeted everyone, led a few communal breathing exercises, and introduced the musicians, who performed not on a stage but in the center of the circle, often moving around the space. Lights stayed on so everyone could see one another, and attendees were encouraged to be mindful of how they were feeling throughout and asked to share their reactions at the end. The feedback proved the organizers were onto something special.

“We don’t realize what we need—that moment of breath, to step away from it all, to just let it go. And when we come to the Well-Being Concerts, that’s exactly what we can do,” says Dr. Barbara Bethea, director of the Creative Arts Therapy Department at Correctional Health Services–Rikers Island, a program run by NYC Health + Hospitals. “I can still hear the music and us singing, sitting around in a circle. I don’t remember the song, but I remember the feeling and that connection that we had in the room.”

In many ways, the Beyond Performance study reconfirmed what Johnson, Koebner, and company had already observed: that regular arts attendance has significant health benefits. “A key takeaway for me is the feasibility and value of cultural institutions and performing arts centers exploring their public health value, and to recognize and articulate the impact they’re having on people’s health and well-being,” says Koebner.

The research also showed that concertgoers had a variety of reasons for attending—not everyone was seeking peace and quiet. “We mapped people’s intentions for attending these concerts and found a wide range, from seeking rest and restoration to hoping for collective joy, vitality, and strength,” explains Koebner.

“That allows for a huge variety of musical expression, so the construct can hold the whole repertoire of amazing artists who are out there. What we found in the study is that, despite the diversity of intentions, the concerts exceeded expectations. But that also means we can’t do just one concert. It’s a relational, longitudinal commitment to exploring this space and adapting the repertoire, the context, and the hosts.”

Since that first four-performance run, the Hall’s Well-Being Concerts have increased exponentially. This season, in addition to a series of private performances for the communities WMI serves—including veterans and health care workers—there are eight hour-long public offerings. “We’ve not only expanded in terms of quantity, but also in terms of context, doing them outside of Carnegie Hall and exploring whether they still have resonance and impact,” says Koebner. The model is also being shared with partners around the globe—including arts presenters in Canada, Germany, and Slovenia—to extend the program’s reach.

Koebner has hosted a number of Well-Being Concerts both at the Hall and offsite. While he insists they are all memorable, one in particular stands out.

“For the past three years, we’ve co-produced a Well-Being Concert in collaboration with the World Health Organization and the Jameel Arts & Health Lab on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly,” he says. “This year, we had a really diverse audience, from artists, to health care providers and practitioners, to city officials, to some high-level diplomats. One of the invitations at these concerts is to be as comfortable in your body as possible. To watch the UN diplomats in their impeccable suits take off their shoes and lie down on the floor next to everybody else from New York City, it just struck me. It’s democratizing. There are no box seats—if anything, you’re fighting for a cushion. It’s inviting and permissive and encourages everyone to think about being comfortable on all levels, emotionally and physically.”

While the Well-Being Concerts aren’t meant to supplant traditional health care, the two can work in tandem. “We’re not advocating for this in the place of conventional care, but we know that sometimes an artistic experience can reach somebody in a way that traditional methods can’t,” says Johnson, citing a performance for public health employees where an attendee talked about the loss of a loved one. “She said that the concert gave her the space to grieve, that she felt held by the space of the concert and the presence of others.”

Koebner concurs. “These concerts aren’t intended to be therapy, and yet they are therapeutic,” he says. “While they don’t replace the clinical encounter, some of what we need can be created in cultural spaces, and there’s a need to de-medicalize care.”

Koebner and his colleagues are already at work on a follow-up study about the Well-Being Concerts. “We partnered with the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory at the University of California to conduct a randomized controlled trial around the second season, in which we explored the impact the concerts had on individuals’ well-being,” he explains. “We also played with extending the concert experience by having one group get what we called ‘savoring prompts’: little segments of the concert they attended once a week for several weeks afterward, with an invitation to reflect back on that experience.”

That spirit of innovation is guiding the evolution and expansion of the Well-Being Concerts. “Carnegie Hall is, obviously, an amazing institution and set of stages, but through WMI, it also has this huge reach and social impact, and there’s a genuine curiosity to explore,” says Koebner. “I hope we continue to be a creative laboratory in which we experiment with all the elements of the concert experience to optimize both its artistic offerings and its impact on individual and collective well-being.”

Photography by Fadi Kheir and Jennifer Taylor.