I had the incredible good fortune this past week to get to see three phenomenal classical music performances. On Thursday night I saw Anthracite Fields by Julia Wolfe at Carnegie Hall. On Friday night I was completely blown away by pianist Evgeny Kissin. Also at Carnegie Hall, this was a program made up primarily of pieces by Frederick Chopin. It was absolutely thriling, and Kissin did four encores. On Saturday I saw ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream‘ performed by the NYC Ballet at Lincoln Center. The dancers were wonderful and the orchestra was amazing.
Having the opportunity to see so much music and dance crammed into a short amount of time got me thinking about the healing effect that music and art can have on the human brain. In today’s society we’re bombarded by so many streams of information. YouTube. Email. Current events. Anti-social media. Streaming platforms. All of this competing bits and bytes has fractured our brains, making it increasingly difficult to focus for any signficant length of time.
I want to change that for myself. To that end, I’m beginning a new challenge. Every day I’m going to make a conscious effort to actively listen to a minimum of 10 minutes of classical music.
I believe that this exercise will help reboot my brain and increase my ability to focus for longer and longer periods of time. Classical music that has a palliative effect on the mind. My hope is that by actively listening to classical music on a consistent basis I will regain some of the brain power that modern society has robbed me of.
Each week I’ll share a Spotify playlist of what I listened to the previous week. You’ll find an archive of everything I’ve listened to so far by checking out ‘What I Listened To‘.