Past Events

The Art Education, Research, and Policy Symposium at USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute brought together top voices in arts, science, and education. This event features a special appearance by iconic soprano and arts-health champion Renée Fleming. Explore how the arts can transform student well-being and educational equity.

Check out the agenda for the day.

View the program here.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society hosted the 2024 HCN Segil Symposium. The theme, Exploring the Intersection of Brain, Sound, and Music, features esteemed speakers in the field. Enjoy musical interludes by musicians from Delirium Musicum.

Download the program here.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society hosted a Research Workshop on Music, Health, & Policy, as part of the Los Angeles County Arts and Health Week. Co-curators Dr. Assal Habibi, Dr. Daniel Levitin, Dr. Indre Viskontas, and Renée Fleming, among others, lead discussions on music research to deepen and enhance collaboration among academics, educators, community groups, and clinicians from across the region. With Gail Eichenthal from KUSC as master of ceremonies. This event was organized in partnership with the WHO/Jameel Arts & Health Lab, KUSC, the Sound Health Network, and the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.

Download the program here.

View speaker bios here.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society and USC Thornton’s Department of Music Teaching and Learning hosted a special talk with Dr. Patricia Shehan Campbell, Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington School of Music. A leading voice in music education, Dr. Campbell has authored over a dozen books, including Redefining Music Studies in an Age of Change, Music Education and Diversity, and Songs in Their Heads. She also curates several major series, including Routledge’s World Music Pedagogy and Oxford University Press’s Global Music Series.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society hosted their second faculty talk of the semester featuring Dr. Laura Getz. In her talk she demonstrates the importance of interactions between sensory information received in the auditory and visual modalities, as well as how sensory information interacts with higher levels of processing, with cognitive process such a prior knowledge influencing perceptual processing. For this talk, she focuses on the influence of context on music perception, attention, and memory using 3 experimental examples.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society hosted their first faculty talk of the semester featuring Dr. Andrew Goldman. He discussed the application of neuroscience in music research by first examining challenges and contributions of its application. From this conversations, a final emergent theme from this critical analysis is that music neuroscience makes its best contributions when synthesizing work from other areas of music studies.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society was excited to host Dr. Adina Mornell, who gave a special lecture at Joyce J. Cammilleri Hall. The subjectivity of performance ratings poses a real challenge for those studying instrumentalists’ behavior. We discussed how music research can be designed to be useful to musicians, looking to create meaningful experiments.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society and USC Thornton’s Department of Music Teaching and Learning hosted the official launch of William J. Coppola’s latest book, Egotism, Elitism, and the Ethics of Musical Humility, published by Oxford University Press. Combining philosophical inquiry, empirical research, and pop culture examples, the book examines how cultures of superiority pervade our musical and social lives. It explores how our perpetual striving for individual achievement can lead us to grow increasingly disconnected from one another and how humility can help us to restore our common humanity.

The USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society hosted its very first book talk featuring New York Times Best Seller, Dr. Dan Levitin and his new book, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord at the Brain and Creativity Insitute. This event featured a book talk with Dr. Dan Levitin and a book signing after the event. Dr. Levitin explores the profound connections between music and health.