Beginning in February, members of the Akron Symphony Orchestra will give weekly performances in inpatient behavioral health settings at Summa Health, an Akron-based hospital system. The concerts are a part of the orchestra’s new Music and Mental Health initiative, which integrates music and mental health care at hospitals. To launch the program on February 6, psychiatrist/pianist Dr. Richard Kogan, artistic director of the Weill Cornell Music and Medicine Program in New York City, will deliver lectures on the role of music in healing at the Northeast Ohio Medical University and Summa Health. Kogan will also perform as soloist with the Akron Symphony in Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto, which the composer dedicated to Nikolai Dahl, a psychiatrist and amateur musician who helped the composer work through a period of writer’s block. The concert will also feature Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, loosely inspired by the composer’s infatuation with Irish actress Harriet Smithson. Summa Health psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Varley says he hoped through the initiative to raise awareness of the therapeutic power of music.
Posted February 1, 2016
