Neurologist, Choir Explore Music’s Healing Power

Reputed neurologist and author of books like “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”, Oliver Sacks has come together with the Pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church on the event of World Science Festival to celebrate the healing power of music along with the choir of the church.

Neurologist Oliver Sacks has spent a lifetime exploring a vast array of human experience – from Tourette's syndrome and autism to phantom limb syndrome and schizophrenia. Sack’s is a professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. His writings appear regularly in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. For the past many years he has studied the effect of music on a person’s conscious and subconscious state.

Dr. Sacks describes, for example, how music can animate people with Parkinson’s disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people who are deeply disoriented by Alzheimer’s or schizophrenia.

“Music can be inspiring, moving us to the heights or depths of emotion—and it can also be our best medicine. Music can allow us to express that which is otherwise inexpressible. In a religious context, all of these aspects of music come together,” said Sacks.

“And over the last decade or two, neuroscientists have begun to provide direct evidence of the emotional and therapeutic impact of music, now that we have the tools to study the brain in action. I am honored to present this talk in conjunction with one of the foremost gospel choirs in America; it is a tremendous opportunity to combine the rational discussion of treatment with the emotional impact that a gospel choir can bring to uplift the human spirit.”

The Abyssinian Baptist Church Choir is the resident choir of one of the most prominent African-American institutions in America. The Church, an iconic champion of spiritual empowerment, social justice and reform, is currently celebrating its bicentennial anniversary, Abyssinian 200: True to Our God, True to our Native Land.

The first annual World Science Festival, an unprecedented celebration of scientific discovery, will take place throughout New York City from May 28th through June 1st, 2008, and will bring together over a dozen Nobel Laureates, leading researchers, top-level technologists, dedicated educators, and high-level policy makers with creative artists, filmmakers, and performers to create more than 40 unique events that will shine a spotlight on science and explore the many ways in which scientific discovery and innovation are shaping modern life.

Blending neuroscience with the choir's vibrant and extensive repertoire, along with reflections on the role of African-American sacred music's significant historical expressions, this program provides a stimulating context for Sacks' true-life accounts of patients whose lives were altered by the empowerment of music.