Music has the power to inspire, evoke powerful emotion, and heal our communities. In this event, we will explore the connection between music and health, explaining why music’s redemptive power may hold more potential than we realize. How does music speak to people in ways language cannot? Why is music education vitally important, especially to those who are most in need? Change starts small. It can begin with something as simple as a daily artistic practice, a creative habit. But over time, that small commitment to our creativity will blossom and ripple through our communities in a way that connects us to our greater humanity.

About the Speaker

Vijay Gupta

The work of the citizen and the artist is one, says VIJAY GUPTA: to make sadhana—a daily practice—of the world we envision. Hailed by The New Yorker as a “visionary violinist” and “one of the most radical thinkers in the unradical world of American classical music,” Gupta creates spaces of wholeness and belonging through his work. His album When the Violin was created during quarantine as a means of transforming our collective pain into a restorative, healing narrative. After a time of crisis, he shows us creative ways to revitalize our sense of hope and belonging.

Gupta is the founder and Artistic Director of Street Symphony, a community of musicians creating spaces of connection for people in reentry from homelessness, addiction, and incarceration in Los Angeles. He is also a co-founder of the Skid Row Arts Alliance, a consortium dedicated to creating art for—and with—the largest homeless community in America. For his work in “bringing beauty, respite, and purpose to those all too often ignored by society,” Gupta was the recipient of a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship.