An audience with Renée Fleming

A Pennsylvanian opera singer called Renée Fleming was in London recently to perform in a musical called ‘The Light in the Piazza’ at the Royal Festival Hall, advertisements for which reached out as far as Ryde Esplanade railway station. And more or less while she was there, she put together a (Tuesday) lunchtime session at the Wigmore Hall about music therapy, pulling in five such therapists for the purpose. She turned out to be rather effective in this role; rather to my surprise and not what I expected of a lyric soprano at all. See reference 1.

A fine start at Epsom, some cloud, some breeze. I elected for Bullingdon rather than walk from Vauxhall or Waterloo.

Some congestion on the lines, some platform announcements just wrong, but my train started at the due time.

Much cogitation en-route about why it was that luffing tower cranes have more or less taken over from the other sort of tower cranes, the ones which are flat on top. Is it just some fashion among  mechanical engineers? Are they easier to get up and down?

Then much cogitation about the route, which resulted, not for the first time, in deciding that the Drury Lane route was as good as anything. There were probably shorter routes from Vauxhall or Waterloo to the Wigmore Hall, but the Drury Lane route was simple and I was familiar with it: up Drury Lane to New Oxford Street, then turn left. So I pulled a Bullingdon from the ramp at Waterloo and made it to Broadcasting House, Marylebone in 18 minutes and 58 seconds. That is to say, to the stand outside the Portuguese Consulate, graced with its usual queue of rather sorry looking people outside.

Took a reasonably priced Picpoul in the rather grand public house called the Wigmore which has been fashioned out of a bottom corner of what is otherwise, at least just presently, the Langham Hotel. Admired the way that the high, fancy ceiling has been painted a uniform mid green, leaving only a large brass chandelier by way of decoration.

Into a reasonably full Wigmore Hall, where the proceedings were kicked off by the director, John Gilhooly, followed by Fleming. We then had five speakers giving us around 10 minutes each, with what follows probably being a bit garbled with the passage of time.

Iva Fattorini. Who after a spell at the (huge) Cleveland Clinic, founded Artocene in 2014 and Artocene Digital in 2018, with ‘a vision to activate the latent therapeutic power of the arts on a global level with the highest professional standards. The company’s focus is to provide consulting services and develop new innovative products in the intersection of arts and health’ – with the surprise for me being that this was as much about working on medical facilities – both buildings and staff – as about working on patients directly. See reference 4.

Tim Joss. Chief Executive and Founder, Arts Enterprise with a Social Purpose (Aesop), to be found at reference 5. It was becoming clear that there was quite an industry out there devoted to connecting the arts to care settings. With the focus being on the young, the ill and the old – just like that of medicine at large. Part of this was disinterested, but I dare say that part of it was about trying to justify central funding. The Wigmore Hall itself, for example, turns out to run an impressive community outreach operation.

I think it was Joss who told us of the need to respect choice. The story being that his wife did not care at all for Haydn’s string quartets and that she was unlikely to respond well to them, even should it come to pass that she was ever so demented. Which seemed fair enough, but how was one to know what sort of music a sufferer might respond well too? Hopefully friends and relatives could help here.

Nula Suchet. Artist, filmmaker & author of ‘The Longest Farewell’, the story of her first husband’s decline into dementia. A place where, we were told, that music was the last thing which seemed to reach him. Now sister-in-law of the Suchet who is so well known on ITV3.

And given the rapidly growing numbers of the old and of the demented, a pointer to the market opportunity which this session was, in some part, a response to.

Camilla Vickers. Founder of HealthPitch, to be found at reference 6. The mission being to bring opera into care settings. Don’t patronise; bring them the real thing!

Dr Suzy Willson. Artistic Director, Clod Ensemble & creator of Performing Medicine initiative. With the first being a contemporary dance group and the second using dance – and presumably music – to work on the education of medical professionals. To use music, for example, to help medical staff better understand the way that they interact with their patients. See reference 7.

And then Fleming herself, who, it was becoming clear, was a very well connected person, as evidenced, for example, by reference 8. With what follows being a few more snippets, both from her and her team.

Somewhere along the way, Fleming had volunteered to be put in an fMRI machine for some hours while she sang and while she thought about singing. See reference 9.

Rhythm work seems to help with the socialisation of infants. And choirs seem to work well with older people.

The more-or-less unique human voice has been around for maybe a million years and it would not be surprising if humans were well attuned to their own voices. While the voices of opera singers are relatively recent artefacts, with the singers working hard on the workings of what are usually the involuntary muscles of the vocal apparatus.

Old people are often short on touching of the peer-to-peer sort and can respond well to being organised into doing touching.

All in all a fascinating introduction to the world of music therapy. Only slightly marred by a badly behaved, middle aged Japanese lady (probably) behind me. A regular fidget. Was she part of the community outreach, a reminder that we are supposed to put up with it with a good grace?

On exit from the Wigmore Hall, passed the rather grand entry to the School of Economic Science in Mandeville Place, not to be confused with the place that I went to in Houghton Street, on the other side of town. From the outside, the place looked like some for-profit education operation, and inspection of their website at reference 2 throws up locations all over the UK. But it also says, rather confusingly, that ‘central to the ethos of the School is a love of the arts, and it is in our charitable aims that we support and nurture arts and sciences through lectures, seminars and concerts’. Maybe I will take the time at some point to find out what they are all about.

Pulled my second Bullingdon at Hinde Street, Marylebone and pedalled off to St. Martin's Street, West End, taking 16 minutes and 25 seconds. Learning on the way that there is some serious construction work going on in Grosvenor Square, perhaps to do with re-purposing what used to be the US Embassy there. Also that the stand at Cockspur Street which I like to use was closed. On the other hand, the café that I like to use was still there, the Breadline in Duncannon Street, where they still do a presentable bacon sandwich on white. None of this brown, multi-grain nonsense.

Third and last Bullingdon from [King] William IV Street, Strand, from where I took 7 minutes and 21 seconds to get to Waterloo Station. Where I was very unimpressed by the clutter of rival bike hire operators around the stand. When will the Mayor for London work out that one bike hire operator, that is to say his own, is enough?

On the way to Waterloo, I had been impressed by the very visible commitment of Coutts Bank to matters LGBTQ+. That is to say a large rainbow paint job around their front door in the Strand.

Struck on the train home by a good looking young mother openly feeding her infant child on the train. Very calm and collected about it she was too. The second time I have seen such a thing in as many weeks.

Home to do my homework on music and art therapy, helped along by discovering a day or so later that an outfit called the Perseid School (of reference 3) had put on a show of its pupils’ art in Bourne Hall. A large special school from nearby Merton, which I was rather surprised not to have heard of: ‘Perseid School offers pupils an outstanding educational provision and a caring environment in which to reach their potential. We work with young people, aged 3-19 who have severe and complex learning difficulties and learners with an additional diagnosis of autism and/or physical/sensory difficulties’. But I thought that some of the work on show was rather good – and it prompted interesting musings about the differences between music and art as therapy. With the latter being more individual than social being both a plus and a minus.

PS: on the strength of her session at the Wigmore, we wondered about turning up to a performance of the musical at the Festival Hall, with some tickets being available on a suitable day. But romantic musicals not really my thing, BH not keen either, tickets rather dear, reviews mixed and show rather long at well over two hours, including interval. So we didn't.

References

Reference 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfcALqY26nc. Fleming doing Schubert’s ‘Auf dem Wasser zu singen’. Sounds a bit harsh on my laptop, but it still works.

Reference 2: https://www.schooleconomicscience.org/.

Reference 3: https://www.perseid.merton.sch.uk/.

Reference 4: https://artocene.com/.

Reference 5: https://ae-sop.org/.

Reference 6: https://www.healthpitch.org/.

Reference 7: https://www.clodensemble.com/.

Reference 8: NIH/Kennedy Center Workshop on Music and the Brain: Finding Harmony - Thomas Cheever, Anna Taylor, Robert Finkelstein, Emmeline Edwards, Laura Thomas, Joke Bradt, Steven J. Holochwost, Julene K. Johnson, Charles Limb, Aniruddh D. Patel, Nim Tottenham, Sunil Iyengar, Deborah Rutter, Renée Fleming, Francis S. Collins – 2018.

Reference 9: https://davidjangraw.wordpress.com/. The man who does the fMRI scanning mentioned above.

Reference 10: https://www.apnews.com/895c5b00f554466894d1d50a851ef5ec. An Associated Press article which talks, inter alia, about Jangraw’s work with Fleming. Also the source of the snap above in which we have violinist Anthony Hyatt leading dancers through MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington on Oct. 11, 2017. The musicians and dancers are part of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center's arts and humanities program.

Reference 11: https://lombardi.georgetown.edu/. The Cancer Centre mentioned just above: ‘… an internationally  recognized academic health and science center with a four-part mission of research, teaching, service and patient care (provided through a partnership with MedStar Health)…’.