Singing, Storytelling, and Cognitive Science

Summary

LA Opera Podcasts: Behind the Curtain

Episode: Singing, Storytelling, and Cognitive Science
Date: May 12, 2026
Host: Dr. Andrea Fuentes (Vice President, LA Opera Connects)
Guests: Dr. Asal Habibi (USC Brain and Creativity Institute), Susan Kotces (Executive Director, Los Angeles Children’s Chorus), Dr. Michelle Pizakis (Opera Singer, Teaching Artist)

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Episode Overview

This insightful episode explores the intersection of opera, cognitive science, and childhood development through a unique collaboration between LA Opera, the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus (LACC), and USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute. The conversation focuses on how singing, movement, and storytelling in opera settings enhance children’s cognitive skills, language development, and social-emotional learning. The guests share perspectives from education, scientific research, and arts practice, highlighting both outcomes and possibilities for the future.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Purpose of the Collaboration

• The collaboration was designed to investigate what happens when young people engage deeply with opera and music.
• Three pillars: hands-on opera lessons, scientific research into cognitive/social benefits, and a commitment to accessibility and joy.

“Can we use that [opera and storytelling] as a way of helping children work on their social emotional learning skills, giving them an opportunity to experience emotions in a safe space, … to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes?”
— Dr. Asal Habibi [03:33]

2. Research Foundation: The Science of Music and Empathy

• Dr. Habibi brings 15+ years of research at the intersection of music and cognitive neuroscience, focusing on children’s brain development, executive function, language, attention, and social-emotional learning.
• Noted findings:
  • Participation in music enhances decision-making, cognitive flexibility, and empathy.
  • Storytelling in opera provides a unique framework for children to practice emotional regulation, perspective-taking, and community-building.
• The hypothesis: Music and narrative together can accelerate not just cognitive but also social-emotional milestones.

“You can have really, really good cognitive skills. But if you do not have skills in social emotional domains, … if you cannot have empathy and compassion, it would be really difficult to function as a society.”
— Dr. Asal Habibi [04:24]

3. The LACC Perspective: Building Character Through Music

• LACC’s Mission: Excellence in musical training is a vehicle for broader skills: perseverance, creativity, risk-taking, and delayed gratification.
• The curriculum emphasizes empathy—“every time you sing a different song, you’re a different character”—and cultural diversity in music.
• LACC’s accessibility efforts include high levels of financial aid and outreach to neurodiverse and differently abled choristers.

“Our goal is to build their character, to build their perseverance, to build their creativity, … to build their tolerance for creative risk taking, to build their acceptance of delayed gratification.”
— Susan Kotces [10:16]

4. Classroom Practice: Opera as Experiential Learning

• Dr. Michelle Pizakis details her approach:
  • Each lesson begins in a circle, promoting eye contact, community, and group listening.
  • Integration of Dalcroze movement (embodying rhythm) and call-and-response.
  • Each class involves active listening, storytelling, movement, and role-play based on opera themes (e.g., Hansel and Gretel, Carmen, Rigoletto, Commedia dell’arte).
  • Students learn and perform in multiple languages (English, Mandarin, French, German, Italian).
  • Artistic tasks include drawing music and embodying emotions, allowing for different learning styles and access points.

“I always start my lessons in a circle. … We’re creating a community. … They can create a story and they have to listen to what one person said and then build on it.”
— Dr. Michelle Pizakis [25:26], [30:07]

“Singing is accessible to everybody. We all have a voice.”
— Susan Kotces [50:20]

5. Joy, Kindness, and Social Cohesion as Core Values

• Joy and kindness are intentionally embedded in each class, nurturing a safe space for creative risk-taking and emotional expression.
• Participants demonstrate increased confidence, willingness to share, and social cohesion akin to the bonds formed on choir tours.

“Children who are happy and joyful learn best... Our core values are kindness and joy.”
— Susan Kotces [38:22]

6. Clinical and Measurable Impact

• Assessment batteries administered before and after the program measure:
  • Language development (vocabulary, working memory, phonological awareness)
  • Attention span and cognitive flexibility (online games, working memory tasks)
  • Social-emotional indicators (anxiety, stress, sadness, happiness)
  • Parent feedback for added objectivity
• Early Results:
  • Significant improvement in mental health metrics (reduced sadness, anxiety, stress)
  • Notable gains in language skills, attention, and executive function
  • These findings affirm that sustained, joyful engagement in opera-based activities correlates with brain plasticity and healthy child development.

“Brain plasticity does not happen in a stressed individual. … Seeing these mental health metrics change in a significant way just really after nine months of combined training ... was really encouraging.”
— Dr. Asal Habibi [38:56]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Empathy and Opera:
  • “That ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes with the vehicle of music is extremely powerful.”
    — Susan Kotces [12:11]
• Reflecting on Teaching:
  • “Opera singers are second only to fighter pilots in the number of things they have to think about at once…”
    — Susan Kotces [15:27]
• Giving Permission to Feel:
  • “Your ideas and the way you interpret this music are really important… I wanted to give them permission right from the beginning.”
    — Dr. Michelle Pizakis [25:40]
• On Joy in Learning:
  • “We often forget that music making is fun… joy and fun should be a way for us to have access to music.”
    — Dr. Asal Habibi [53:07]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Introduction & Framing the Collaboration – [00:03–02:37]
• Motivations for Collaboration (Dr. Habibi) – [02:37–05:39]
• Dr. Habibi’s Research Journey & Musical Education Insights – [06:04–07:24]
• LACC Mission and Impact (Susan Kotces) – [08:03–15:21]
• Teaching Practice and Arts Pedagogy (Dr. Pizakis) – [16:58–19:38]
• Activities, Storytelling, Classroom Techniques – [20:58–34:36]
• Accessibility and Adaptability in Education – [34:36–38:22]
• Discussion of Measurable Clinical Impacts – [38:46–40:57]
• Language and Cognitive Learning through Opera – [40:57–42:50]
• Assessment Methodology (Dr. Habibi) – [44:31–47:46]
• Thoughts on Social Cohesion & Joy – [50:10–54:35]
• Reflections and Takeaways from Each Guest – [55:42–58:48]

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Final Takeaways & Recommendations

• Arts Immersion Matters: Deep, joyful engagement with opera and storytelling can effect profound cognitive, emotional, and social changes in children.
• Opera Is for All: The entry points are many—music, language, movement, visual arts, and narrative—making opera a powerful educational tool for diverse learners.
• Evidence Is Key: Measurable outcomes strengthen the case for arts education, answering the “why” for funders, policymakers, and skeptics.
• Prioritize Joy and Community: Kindness, fun, and social connection are essential ingredients for lifelong learning and healthy development.

“Opera is all the arts. Opera is every entry point and it’s an incredibly powerful tool for children and adults.”
— Susan Kotces [57:12]

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For more information on upcoming projects and the LA County Arts and Health Week Summit, visit laopera.org/summit.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to behind the Curtain, LA Opera's official podcast. Each week we dive deep into the creative process with the artists, creatives and scholars who bring opera to life. Get ready to decode the drama, dissect the music and hear the heart behind the high notes. From backstage laughs to history making moments, every opera starts with a story. Get ready for the fifth annual LA County Arts and Health Week Summit with this conversation hosted by LA Opera Connect's Vice President, Dr. Andrea Fuentes. This conversation was recorded live as part of our most recent Exploring Opera session, LA Opera Connect's free virtual learning series, with this session focused on all things arts and health. In this episode, Andrea facilitates a dialogue about LA Opera's unique collaboration and with the LA Children's Chorus and the USC Brain and Creativity Institute, featuring Dr. Asal Habibi, Susan Kotces and Dr. Michelle Pizakis. Did you know that singing and storytelling enhance cognitive and social emotional skills? The science is there and if this research excites you, join us for the Arts and Health week summit on June 12th. Learn more and RSVP now at Laopera. Org Slash Summit.

[B]

One of the things we're going to talk about today is something very special and very unique and it's around a shared question, and that is what happens when young people engage deeply with opera and music in practice for this particular conversation that looks like Dr. Michelle Patzakis, who's an incredible opera singer and teaching artist, working directly with cohorts of students at LA Children's Chorus and leading them through music based interactions that span singing, movement, storytelling and more. Those students receive musical training, of course, at lacc, and I'm excited to talk to Susan about that. And of course then we're also in collaboration with Dr. Asal Habibi at the Brain and Creativity Institute. And so today we're going to hear what this collaboration looks like, why it started, what we're hoping to gain from it from each of our own perspectives in terms of how that shapes what we do at LA Opera, how it shapes other interactions with music and what we're hoping to learn from this study. And so that's why we're here talking about this today as part of Arts and Culture. And so welcome everybody and thank you for being here. And I, I'd like to start with us all and find out what created this moment of this question for you and what you were hoping to gain from this collaboration.

[C]

Wonderful. Thank you Andrea and, and thank you Tate and Andrea and LA Opera Connect for bringing us together and for this opportunity. I'M very glad to be here. So my. The past 15 years or so have been looking at how engagement with music can impact neurocognitive development and social emotional development across the lifespan. And they've been focusing a lot on looking at developing children and how learning music and engagement with music in different ways can really provide them a tool for emotion regulation, for brain development, for enhancing cognitive skills. And one of the things we have really seen with instrumental music or singing is enhancement of cognitive functions, executive functions, decision making, language development. But we wanted to expand that question and see if we have an opportunity to be able to connect music with storytelling, which is kind of like really the essence of opera and musical theater. Can we use that as a way of helping children to work on their social emotional learning skills, giving them an opportunity to experience emotions in a safe space, to be sad and to be okay with being sad, to experience that sadness, experience that happiness through stories and narratives. Learn how to take another person's perspective, put yourself in somebody else's shoes. Because from my perspective, you can have really, really good cognitive skills. But if you do not have skills in social emotional domains, if you cannot connect with others, if you cannot understand their perspective and not have empathy and compassion, it would be really difficult to function as society and over have a cohesive group of interactions. So I was really lucky that when I brought up this idea to both you LA Opera and LA Children's Chorus, everybody was excited to explore this. This is a really. The first year of it was very preliminary. We wanted to know if we can even make this work. But I'm really glad to see it coming together. And we've now had two cohorts. Two years. And the second cohort that we had last year is a. A larger cohort. And what we are really looking at in these children is that the combination of their really excellent training in singing and choir, singing with LA Children's Chorus, and the fabulous lessons that Michelle provides to them and introduces them to different aspects of opera and singing and storytelling. And in addition to that, you all have opened the doors of the LA Opera for them to come. And we ask them to attend to five performances at the LA Opera because we also believe that if you do that as a child, if you are welcoming these spaces as an adult, you make decisions voluntarily to participate in creative art making. And we are looking at cognitive function, social emotional learning, language development, really kind of like a comprehensive battery of developmental milestones that we think that can change as a result of participation in this.

[B]

Thank you. I'm so glad that you brought up the cognitive elements of what you're discussing, because one of the things that our work has really been focusing on recently is social and emotional learning at LA Opera, and we're really. I'm very interested in hearing more from your perspective about what this does for children from a cognitive element as well. So I'd love to return to that, but if you wouldn't mind just telling us a little bit about yourself and your work.

[C]

Sure. Thank you for that. So I am Asal Habibi. I'm an associate professor of psychology at USC's Brain and Creativity Institute. I grew up as a musician, and we have this joke in research, that research is research, so you want to answer questions about yourself. But I always really valued what music did for me as a child, both in terms of finding a community, learning how to process my emotions, and just kind of like learning other languages. And I was really curious to answer this question. So at the Brain and Creativity Institute, we have a music and brain program that we have developed since 2011, and we work with different art organizations and music organizations, but really understanding the role of engagement with music, whether that's through learning to play an instrument, learning how to sing, if you work with older adults, learning to listen to music attentively, how that can impact neurocognitive development across the lifespan, and just kind of finding evidence to have music back to people's life in a way that I think evolutionary was part of our life. And maybe as we get older, we tend to be more inhibited around, like, practicing or singing. So we want to provide the scientific evidence of the importance and the role of music in life.

[B]

Thank you, Asal. Susan, I am so grateful to have gotten to know you over the past couple of years and that we have this amazing partnership. I know that the children in the Children's Chorus are frequently on the L A Opera stage for various productions, and I know they receive unbelievable musical training and performance training through lacc. Could you tell me a little bit about what brought you into this collaboration and what you're hoping for, the families and children from lacc, and maybe a little bit about that perspective of what you feel like they're receiving from it and what you hope to gain from this collaboration?

[D]

Absolutely. Thank you for that warm welcome, Andrea. And I, too, have loved getting to know you and being part of this wonderful collaboration and partnership. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Susan Kotzis, and I am the executive director of Los Angeles Children's Chorus. I'VE been with LACC for a little over two years now, but I became familiar with Asal's work, I think about 12 years ago, seeing a presentation that she gave at a conference and about a similar study, or I think one of her first big studies that she did with Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles. And at the time, I was working for an orchestra, and we were always looking for the why. I was in the education and community engagement space, the why for funders. You know, why should we teach music to children? What benefits does it have for children? And we have folks who already love music, and you don't really have to convince them, but for folks who don't, they really want to know, what are kids getting out of music that is extra musical that they might not get from another place? And Asal's research really spoke to that, even in its earliest stages, incredibly compelling. And. And I was constantly keeping an eye on the website and looking at their research results, and we were using those in grant applications. So I come from a scientific family, though myself, I am not scientific, but I of trade or background. And I just was blown away by this wonderful merging of the arts and science together. So that's when I first learned about this path we're going on. In terms about myself, the first part of my career, I made my living as an opera singer based in France. I've been a music educator and continue to be since my early 20s, since grad school, and actually made a decision to go to this side of the arts world while doing an opera for children where part of our cast was children. So on the stage with us, and the children in the audience had to learn some of the songs and sing with us. So it's this very collaborative, interactive moment. And I did it over two years and. And it was life changing for me. It was life changing for the children, both on stage and in the audience. And so I decided to change the direction of my career based on that. So all the things we're talking about are very deeply important to me as a human, me as an educator, and me as an arts leader. And I chose to come to LACC because I felt like it was truly the location and the organization where everything came together for me and I could get 150% behind everything we were doing. I feel so passionately in our mission. LACC is 40 years old this year. We've been around for 40 years. We currently have over 500 youth from 1st to 12th grades in our program, which started and continues to be based in Pasadena. But a Couple of years ago, we started a partnership with Heart of Los Angeles in the Lafayette park neighborhood. And we have a wonderful, growing partnership there as well with ola. And LACC is absolutely focused on excellence in musical training. Our choristers, in addition to their rehearsals, also have music theory or musicianship classes. Most of them do not go on to be musicians or professional singers. That is not our goal. Some do, but our goal is to build their character, to build their perseverance, to build their creativity, to build their ability to not give up, to keep going, to build their tolerance for creative risk taking, to build their acceptance of delayed gratification. These are all skills that music teaches us, and especially vocal music. And what ASA was touching on, empathy. Every time you sing a different song, you're a different character. You're a different person in different imagined circumstances. And our choristers, our conductors, take our choristers through that experience. With every song, the choristers know what they're singing about, even if it's in Japanese, if it's in Korean, if it's in whatever language that they may or may not speak, they know not only how to pronounce the words, but also what story they're telling.

[C]

And.

[D]

And so that ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes with the vehicle of music is extremely powerful. And so it's a perfect match for this program. And as Andrea shared, we already do have choristers performing with LA Opera. These skills and these priorities are already part of what we teach. And so this is a beautiful extension of that. Also to say our choristers who do perform with LA Opera or perform in operas or other theatrical productions in their lives share a wonderful enhancement that is for them. And so I feel not only is it an out, it's a growth from what we're doing, but it's a wonderful value add to their education and allows them another entry point. In terms of our families, we serve families from across LA county also. We do have some families in Orange county, just a few, and truly all over LA County. We do have a lot of folks who commute not too far in Pasadena, but. But we have families coming from the west side, we have families coming from the North Valley, we have families coming from the South Bay. And we have a lot of families who stay with us for 10 to 12 years. And we are part of the fabric of their family's life. And we really work hard to meet our choristers where they are. We provide a high level of financial aid to ensure that finances will never prevent access to our programs. We also provide some programs completely free of charge, and that includes our touring programs. As our choristers get older, they have the opportunity to tour to places as close as San Diego or visiting the Music center, as some of our younger choristers did to going to Asia or Europe, Australia, places like that. So when we make that accessible for everybody, we also are working ever harder to make our programs accessible for neurodiverse and differently abled choristers. And that's a real focus of our work. And I'm really interested in seeing we do have some choristers who are neurodiverse in the study, what our researchers learn and how that can potentially inform how we can better serve our students. And I'm hoping through this participation, not only that this is a value add and a wonderful experience and a great extension, and maybe it'll spark joy and excitement to participate in opera in some way later in life for some of our choristers, but I'm also really interested in the learning, very interested in the learning and how it might help us to do an even better job with our choristers and potentially, just like in my previous job, you know, maybe help us make our case for people who aren't yet sold on the value of music education or vocal or chorus. Music education, that is secondary, but it is. It is important because not everyone, I think everyone who's here today cares and doesn't need to have the why explained to them, but we know that, that some do. And if I can tell someone that this is helping a kid in their math or it's helping them to emotionally regulate so they can be a better student sitting in their, you know, elementary or middle school or high school classroom. That's a wonderful thing. And that also can excite and engage. So I think that answered all your questions, Andrea. If I missed anything, let me know.

[B]

You did an incredible job. Like, you just hit everyone. I was like, wow. She's like, just.

[A]

It's incredible.

[D]

Thank you. Well, you know, they say that opera singers are second only to fighter pilots in the number of things they have to think about at once. And though I don't do it for a living anymore, I think my brain still does that. So that's another reason to engage in arts education.

[C]

Well, thank you.

[B]

Thank you for that comprehensive response, and I appreciate you so much, Michelle. I'd love to turn to you and just say welcome and thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Michelle. I. I met you, I think, when we were doing the long Covid. Program with ucla. And I have been blown away by your musicianship, your musicality, that you've done a bunch of programs with us with kids. And you're always so thoughtful and generous with your time and you're so patient and it's just like a pleasure to sit in your class and to be in that situation space with you. So I'm always so excited for the kids to learn from you. For a little bit of context here, I know that. So you're, you're providing these sessions and we'll get into the details of the sessions in a moment, but I'd love to hear a little bit about your background and, and what you were hoping to achieve in, in this space or as a performer yourself, bringing these gifts and skill sets that you have. And I know that your also a doctor of musical arts and that a lot of your background is in science through usc. And so I'd love to hear a little bit about how that's shaping your approach.

[E]

Thank you so much. Yes. I spent really a lifetime as an opera singer and that kinesthetic experience of the voice was so profound. And to have permission in opera to be so expressive and so exaggerated and so big, and have every element of the arts, visual art, movement and dance and. And then collaboration, where we're acting theatrically, bringing it all to life, was such a joyful experience as a performer and an artist. And then to be able to go back for my doctorate and go deeply into music teaching and learning, directing for the operatic stage, doing arts administration, bringing all of that together, to be able to impart that to the next generation of young artists, has been really extraordinary, particularly with LA Opera Connects and all of the various programs. So I was super excited. I had done work with the USC Voice center and with music teaching and learning in collaboration with the USC Brain and Creativity Institute. And I love looking at having the why the research, to be able to give value to what it is we're doing as artists and to be able to continue the art form and to do it across people's lifespan, which I think is really, really important. So this project was very exciting for me to embark and I was given the task of, you know, exploring opera, exploring these, the benefits of the expression, the language and the collaboration that happens. But other than that, I didn't have very many parameters. So I had. It's sort of a smorgasbord of activities and music that we're doing over the course of seven lessons, each lesson taught twice. So it's 14 classes and it has been so much fun for me to delve into this listening aspect that we heard from Dr. Montesanto Brown that I wanted the children to not just listen, but actively listen and participate in the music and how can I do that? So that's been my charge and my joy to be able to find those connections.

[B]

Thank you, Michelle. I would love to get a sense for everybody. One of my goals for this conversation is for the possibility to be brought to the table. What is possible? What are we hoping for? What do we think that this does for kids and what do we think it could do for kids in the future separately from this space? And so before we get to that, I'd love to know a little bit about what we think the session really is, what these sessions and these activities do. Asal, you mentioned that one of the activities is that they come to LA Opera performances and that's super fun for us. We love to see them there. We had an eight, eight year old come to our orchestra tech rehearsal the other day of Falstaff and ask our vice president of artistic planning a bunch of really fun questions for him. And he brought it up to me the next day. He was like beaming with a smile on his face. So even just from a joy perspective, it's doing real work for us. But for the kids themselves and what they're receiving in these sessions, I'm not sure how to get to the sense of that. So maybe, maybe we could start with you as all in terms of what you thought of like the shape of what the kids should receive and then we can get into the work that Michelle and Susan do.

[C]

Yeah, thank you for that. And Michelle is very correct. We didn't give her a lot of detailed instructions of how to create these lessons. And I so respect Michelle, your creativity and innovation and how and you put these really, really fun lessons together. So my idea going into this was I wanted to find an opportunity to combine elements of music learning and active music listening and narrative and storytelling. We already knew that these children get really high quality and excellent music training and music theory programming through the children's chorus, Los Angeles Children Chorus. So that singing part and learning how the aspects of singing and music theory that was covered. So what can we give them in addition that would fulfill the idea of putting music and narrative together? So that was kind of the idea that we went to Michelle too and you, Andrea, of talking about we don't want to telling a parent we're going to teach your child how to sing in opera. Maybe that's too overwhelming. And a lot of even adults don't have a relationship with opera because maybe there is, like, an inhibition, social inhibition. It's like, maybe I'm not good enough. I can't hear well enough. I don't know this story. But one idea is that we want to introduce this form of art and creative art making early in their life. They understand this is something that's been practiced for a very, very long time. We put stories and narratives to music, and we sang it and we perform it. And that's one of the ways of creating communities and bringing people together. So that was one idea. And then the other thing that Michelle and I talked a lot about is this aspect of storytelling and being able to put yourself in somebody else's sho is really not something you can teach a child. Like, to have empathy. You have to provide experiences of empathy and understanding of like and how somebody else's feel. Whether you can share that emotional state, and you can share that emotional state without falling apart. You can. You can hold sadness and be with it and be able to help somebody else. And that's something that we see a lot of challenges in our school system, maybe the way our education curriculums are designed. So that was another highlight that we wanted to see for these children to learn. And I just want to also touch base on the cognitive aspect, because even though we did not emphasize that in terms of the design of the program as much, but a center, because we are. I've seen just this last week that I was there, just children learning how to pronounce words, paying attention to vocabulary, their language development. Language development is one of the biggest aspects of executive and cognitive development. And the other aspect of it is attention. Attention is the commodity now. How much. How much you can maintain focus and just sitting in that room and seeing these young children for 45 minutes, really attending and paying attention and being able to manage their focus, to kind of inhibit impulses of wanting to do other things and just kind of be there with each other. Teaching that is really important now because we deal with this really attention crisis as we go through. I mean, I don't want to only say children, adolescents, adults too. I mean, everybody walks around with some form of entertainment and phone and just learning. That capacity to control your attention has a lot of impact on cognitive development. And I think all of these, again, I want. I don't want to separate cognition from social and emotional learning because they're all very connected. Our cognitive abilities allows us to have better social interactions, and then we don't. We're not robots. We don't make cognitive decisions in absence of emotional and social aspects of our life. So learning how to regulate your emotions probably has better impact on how you make decisions in everyday life and how you choose. You're able to delay a reward for something better in future. So those were kind of the ingredients going in with it. And yeah, I welcome like hear from others of like, I had these ideas, but Michelle and Susan, you masterfully implemented them in the program.

[D]

I'd love to have Michelle start. So just to say Michelle is the genius behind all of this, I'm just helping and supporting her in class. So I'd love her to go first.

[E]

And thank goodness, it's great to have another model. And I think that's been really an important aspect of the classes is that Susan and I are both modeling the activities and giving permission to the children to follow and then come up with their own ideas. So I always start my lessons if I could just go through a few of the activities just to kind of give a picture of what's happening and my thought processes. I start the lesson always in a circle. And so we're all looking at each other and we're attending to one another within this group or creating a community. And as they enter the room, they're always hearing music from. I usually have a theme for the day, whether it's German opera tales or we're looking at Flamenco and Carmen because that's coming up in this season, etc. And so there'll be music playing. And so that's passive listening as they come in. But then when they get into the circle, I've combined find two different activity exercises. One is Dalcros, where they're able to embody the music and feel the music and then do gesture and express what they think the music might be saying or what they feel from the music in the tempo of the music. So they have to listen to the tempo and the quality of the music and respond. So they're actively listening and then responding physically. And everyone has the opportunity within a few counts of the music to do the introduce their own idea. We all watch and then we model it in the next measure. So it's automatically right from the start where we're attending to each other, we're listening, we're acting and reacting. We're also giving them permission to have ideas and that their ideas are valid. And you know, I always thought of operas being a recreative art, but the more I get into it, there's so much creativity that we have as an artist to bring to it. So I wanted to give them permission right from the beginning. Like, your ideas and the way you interpret this music are really important, important Chekhov gestures, in addition to that, give us some language like pushing and pulling and expanding and contracting. So I give them some parameters of vocabulary physically to express. So I. I think I'm going to just play. When we do the. The flamenco and the. Again, we go into culture and sort of understanding other people's other cultures. We look at catfish roe and Porgy and Bess. What are those people going through? We look at the. At Carmen and the flamenco culture. And so this is Marcin playing guitar, but it's very percussive. So it gives them a lot of possibility for expression. So fun. And then if we did Flores, we're going to learn Flores Goddess. And so some of them may feel shy, some may come right out and be doing these big gestures. Someone else may just go. And then guess what? We model that and give them permission to say, I don't know what to do in that. In my count. And then we all do it. And it's kind of fun. So the other thing that the next step would be that there opera is these musical conversations, musical theater, that music is conversation, that we have the framework of a story, beginning, middle and end. We have conflict and resolution. So in the German opera tales, we have Hansel and Gretel. So we introduced that they are able to go to L. A opera and see some of these scenes, but then experience it. So they know the story of Hansel and Gretel. We review it, but then we look, okay, how do singing artists interpret these roles? So give them a little parameter where it's so do mire do for their reset. And then they can create a story and they have to listen to what one person said and then build on it. So if they know the story of Hanson, Gretel, my name is Hansel, I admire my sister.

[D]

And then I might respond, and I'm Gretel. My brother doesn't know how to dance.

[E]

And then we'll go, keep going and tell the whole story of how they got lost in the forest, etc. Then we build on that by actually learning the excerpt of music from Hansel and Gretel. They learn the dance, and the dance is actually a mirroring activity because Gretel says, come and dance with me. It's as easy as can be. Right foot first, left foot, then roundabout and back again. And then he tries and he sings the same phrases and the same words, and then acts it out. So then we. We learn it the way it sort of is in the score. And we talk about, again, that empathetic and sort of emotional aspect of who is Hansel and who is Gretel? Hansel feels awkward. He doesn't know how to dance. He's embarrassed. But he admires his sister. His sister's really confident. She knows how to do it. And they have this relationship where he ends up learning. He tries to. He fails, but then he gets it. But they work together. So then we did another iteration of it where Hansel is not interested in what Gretel's doing. So we did the cup song from Pitch Perfect, and we had that. Hansel was in his own little world, and we did the little cup song, which is sort of a percussive drumming activity. Also, it's musical, so we did it to the music.

[D]

And.

[E]

But how would Gretel feel if Hansel's not paying attention to her? And why doesn't Hansel care? Is it because he doesn't even want to try, because he knows he can't? Right. So that they. They embody those emotions of those characters in that musical conversation that is also using movement and dance and props and costumes to bring it to life and to have the experience of doing it. So I try to find different ways to embody that. So then Hansel and Gretel go out into the forest. They get lost. The father is very worried. So then we have Rigoletto and Verdi, and Rigoletto is very worried about his daughter, who's been abducted. So similarly, like, lost child, panicked father. So we listened to Rigolettos Cortigiani, which is a very dramatic, very emotional aria. And I had the children do a. Like a musical mapping, draw your feelings so they could sit at the table and imagine this. Father. But I don't always tell them the full context because I want them to experience the music. What is the orchestration telling you? What is the tempo telling you? What is the quality of the singer's voice telling you about the story at this moment? So to give them the opportunity to just draw the feelings and then tell us about their idea and their perception of what that story and that aria was telling us. So we've had fun exploring, through being a musical critic and writing about the music that we hear, drawing the music that we hear, acting out the music that we hear. The last one was Commedia dell', arte, learning about these stock characters and giving them permission within the stereotypes of these characters. The young Lovers that are dreamy and. And then the crotchety old man who's just worried about his money and to see the children kind of come to life. And each of them have a different learning style. So it gives them all the opportunity to shine and experience the music and the stories in a way that they feel comfortable because some are better at the different activities and tasks or feel more comfortable. And then hopefully through all of that, they all get a connection and an experience, a visceral, emotional experience with the material.

[D]

I just wanted to say something too, an interesting observation. So because these children are already in rehearsals and they're learning musicianship, they're able as well to jump into these musical activities relatively quickly. I've done a lot in my previous job, a lot of musical enrichment on, you know, within the school day. And the problem or the challenge with that is you've got children of all different levels, and you can still do these same activities with children of all different levels, but you have to go at it a little differently. Like, you have to teach little tiny segments and repeat multiple times. Even if these kids don't get it very quickly right away, they pick it up quickly because they're in rehearsal every week. Especially with some of the older study participants, they've been in LACC maybe three years, and they actually have quite a good music reading ability. Or we have a number of children who also play an instrument, and Michelle always provides the musical score. So they're able to really jump in quickly. And we're able to do a lot with the music, much more than I've ever seen in doing arts enrichment activities with elementary age children before. But that doesn't mean that what Michelle is. Is doing with our choristers couldn't be done in like, an elementary school setting by any means. It would just need to be a little bit less musical content or, you know, spread out over multiple classes, more repetition of teaching the actual musical piece. But it's been really exciting that because these choristers do have this musical background, we can do so much with the music. And they're singing right away, and they're making observations about the music, and they're making. Making as asal touched on observations about the language, which is really, really exciting to see. And as I mentioned, they're already learning about different languages, different cultures, different characters, but in like, a group musical setting. And then being able to do this in a much smaller group and where they're individually able to do specific ways of interpreting or connecting to the emotions is really powerful for them. And a lot of them seem to me that they're more kinesthetic learners. So being able to get up and dance and move, and maybe they can't articulate what they're imagining, but they can show you with a cool hat and the way they walk. And so it's a really exciting expansion and connection. But again, I keep thinking, like, yes, you. Absolutely. I think because I worked with public schools so much in my previous job and private schools, but with people with very many different abilities and some with no musical background, you absolutely could adapt this. It's just we can take it even further because these kids do have that musical background. And I just wanted to make sure this doesn't. I don't forget to say this, but I was getting a group of kids up for the second class from their rehearsal and a little group of three. We're like, I'm so sad. Today's my last class. Is this gonna happen again next year? Please, please, please. And another chorister, while leaving, knows that he's, you know, most likely gonna move up to that next level of choir next year. And that level right now is not involved in the study. And he said, can I still be involved? Is my new choir gonna be involved? So at least four of our 32, I think, study participants personally talked to me about their sadness of being at the end of the classes and their excitement or hope that they can continue. And I know we haven't done all of our post studies yet, because our last class was on Wednesday and there's still opera performances to attend, but I think we're going to hear that from more and more of our participants. And for me, as the leader of lacc, to see our choristers get enjoyment and joy and have anticipation for future participation is the best endorsement of their experience.

[C]

I'm.

[D]

And we believe very strongly that children who are happy and joyful learn best. And there's a lot of research to that, but that is absolutely our philosophy at lacc. Our core values are kindness and joy. And that is what they're experiencing in these classes. And that is, I believe, we will see learning and growth because they've experienced immense kindness and immense joy.

[C]

I can maybe touch on, because Susan brought up some of the observations. So this is our second year. As. As. As we mentioned, we're doing this, and our first year was just really preliminary, maybe, like, a lot of, like, feasibility that can we do this? We have all these great ideas. Can we put it together into a concrete form? But we did also assess the children from the first cohort, which was a smaller cohort and kind of overall what I want to see what is very interesting for us was really significant improvement in mental health metrics such as reduction in sadness, reduction in anxiety, reduction in stress. And these are important brain plasticity does not happen in a stressed individual. You need to have a body that can manage cortisol and manages stress for neuroplasticity to take place to learning to have an impact on actual biology of the brain. Seeing these mental health metrics vetrices change in a significant way just really after nine months of the combined training of the LA Children's Chorus and these opera classes was really encouraging for us to continue looking at and expanding the second cohort. And then another thing that kind of we have touched on was for me interesting to see the aspects of language development. So phonological awareness is one of the aspects of language awareness that we look at. Like can children decipher different parts of a word? And that's been something that we've seen significantly increase in the first cohort of these children who are participating in this. So as Susan mentioned, our last class was Wednesday and we have a couple of our students will have to complete their performances attendance but we already have planned our what we call post intervention set of assessment that will take place in the next month or so. And then from there we should be able to share a more comprehensive report on this. This year we had 30 students and we are comparing with age matched children who have not participated in this. So really looking at ingredient of change being participation in these classes.

[E]

If I could just say about the language, they have done five languages in the class. So of course there's opera that we've done in English, Porgy and Basque, but Chinese Mandarin for the Jasmine flower song which is used in Turundot. So we looked at the original Molihua and then looked at it in Italian from the Puccini opera. French, German and Italian. So they're, they're getting exposure to all these linguistic experiences and then looking at how the language expresses emotion and feeling. And sometimes an aria is a monologue, for example. We start out both seasons with a shade Shakespeare offering. Last year was Romeo and Juliet, this year it's Falstaff, which is Shakespeare. So looking at how the marriage of words and music and the storytelling from a very, you know, most famous playwright but how the music can tell us what we feel and what we want and what we need. West side Story, there's a song about it, I Feel Pretty and then gave them permission to tell us, us how they feel in putting their own words in the song. And then in the Romeo and Juliet, she sings in French je vu vivre dans surve. I want to live in this dream. And why does she. What dream is it that she has that she wants to live in? So, again, kind of experiencing being able to verbalize and say in these different languages through music what we feel and what we want, and then to be able to empathize with someone else's wants and feelings. And I think that has been just such a beautiful thing to. Not only for me to experience as a leader, but to watch them sort of light up as they get these opportunities.

[B]

Thank you for sharing all of this information. What I'm hearing is in the sessions themselves, for people who might want to think about providing something similar, that there's a lot of modeling, just from an educational perspective in terms of what happens with the children, that there's a lot of. Susan, you said joy and kindness, and I think I introduced Michelle that way. I'm like, this is one of the nicest, most joyful people I know. So that fits perfectly there. And I'm hearing, like, a lot of modeling, opportunity to listen actively and bringing things into the body, it sounds like, and giving them an opportunity to play. And then also the cognitive skills of language acquisition. And there's a lot there, because I think what you have all created is such a incredible opportunity for kids to learn. And I think for a lot of teachers and parents and people in communities who work with kids would love to have these kinds of activities be able to be shared. That's a really wonderful thing that you've created. I'm curious if we could turn a little bit now to what you're seeing in the kids between the start of the sessions to the end of the sessions from your perspectives, Michelle and Susan, and then. Then from a more clinical perspective, as all. I know that there are specific ways that you take measurements, and I think everybody would be interested in hearing a little bit about how you do that with kids. Maybe we could start with the clinical part of it, what is measured?

[C]

Sure. So we have really different ways of looking at development of some of these cognitive and social emotional skills. So what we do now, we have a battery that I think it's about two hours, an hour and a half, plus some breaks, and it's divided in different components. So part of it is language learning. So we look at their language development from perspective of, like, their vocabulary, their understanding of phonological awareness, their auditory working memory, how much. You can keep language information in your memory and can manipulate it. All of these components being very important for learning, learning academic achievement. We look at their attention capacities, their short term memory. Again, how can you, for example, have a string of digits in your memory and manipulate them and say them, for example, in a reverse order gain hallmark of auditory working memory, which is one of the branches of executive function. We generally look at executive control, looking at ability to switch between tasks when the rules of a game changes. How adaptive you are, how easy you can. You're not just like focused on one track. You can actually go back and forth and have that cognitive flexibility. A lot of these are done through these online games. These are not just questions that we ask them that would be very boring for eight year olds. So it's designed for children to do it through standardized games. National Institute of Health has a toolbox called NIH Toolbox that has different kind of categories of cognition. Social, emotional learning, language development. We use a lot of those. We try to do as much as of these possibly on zoom with these children because parents are busy. And a lot of these assessments actually became available after Covid to be able to test them. There are a couple of things that we need to test in person, which we do. We look at their speech in noise perception, their ability to hear and pay attention to something that is important in a noisy environment. And that really translates. Think about a classroom. Classroom is not a quiet place place. Everybody's talking, there's conversations, there's background noise. And if you can actually attend and keep your focus, attention to the teacher. That's one of the things we want to look at. And then we get. There are measures of like some of the social emotional abilities that I mentioned, such as anxiety, stress. They're kind of like their affective state in the world. Sadness, happiness. And we get that both from the children themselves, also from their parents, because that's another objective measure to see how their child has changed over time as a result of participation in this. We put all of that together and that just gives us a summary of different aspects of behavior. Once we see behavior change, hopefully in the following years. We're also interested in understanding the underlying neural mechanisms of these changes, which we will do once that time comes using some of these neuroimaging techniques. But for now we really focus a lot because there's always a question of if the brain changes, but the behavior doesn't change. That doesn't matter. You want to see behavioral change and then understanding the mechanics underneath it.

[E]

I think I Can speak to what Susan was saying, too, to follow that up about the activities and how it can be generalized and applied in other settings, because the classes do move quickly. But I think that part of that was not knowing what the attention and the abilities would be. And the range of age was anywhere from 7 years old to 12 years old. And so they have very different capacities at those different ages and different genders. And so it's always exploring what will be possible. And so I'm sort of improvising in that way. But I think that a lot of music is learned from historically, call and response. And so a lot of the activity, again, this goes to listening and then reacting. And so I can teach it call and response. And I think that even having done things outside of this, where there aren't such musically skilled students, it's absolutely possible. But ideally, you would want to have more time with each module, which. With each concept, and be able to go even deeper into the material and to explore it more. For example, we just did Commedia dell'. Arte. We introduced the characters. They could do a character walk to the music, but the next next step would be for them to interact as those characters. We told jokes. So we did, like, a little kids joke session to get them in the mood for doing comedy and slaps.

[D]

That was very popular.

[E]

Yeah, it was really, really fun. And then. But then let's play jokes in the character of pantalone and inamorati and Arlecchino. And. And what would a joke that Arlecchino plays be different than an inamorati? And so to be able to go even deeper, you know, that's the fantasy, right? To have the time to have the resources, the programming for children to experience music and expression and communication in this, I think, very profound. An effective way.

[D]

No, absolutely, absolutely. And just to piggyback on that, like, yeah, call and response 150%. And the less musical background, the shorter the amount each time and the more repetitions. But every kid can learn music with call and response. And if they've got language acquisition issues, you separate out the words and you just do the melody online. You do the words without rhythm, and then words or the words with rhythm, and then you put them all together. There's so many. I know we're not talking about pedagogical stuff right now, but there's so many ways to do it. Singing is accessible to everybody. We all have a voice. And this is why I'm so passionate to work for a children's chorus, because we can all do this Some of us, it doesn't take as long. Some of us, it takes way longer. But we can all do it. And we don't have to have any equipment to teach a child how to sing. We do not. And we all can put a keyboard, even on our phone, and press a starting pitch. And so just to say it's the most accessible way to teach music along with orff body percussion or, you know, because that's also just using your body. But in terms of what I'm seeing from our choristers, one of the things we've seen at LACC is when our choristers are of the age that they can do overnight tours, and the youngest choristers are more advanced singers that are about fifth grade. A lot of kids there first overnight tours, not until around middle school. And it's not that they don't have friends and they don't have fun before that, but they don't have this really tight social cohesion that is, we think, one of the secret sauces of LACC that our choristers in middle school and high school have. This group, this safe, warm, nurturing, brave community. And those really often get most formed on those overnight tours. And I'm starting to see a little bit of that type of social cohesion, cohesion from the participants of the classes. And it's really exciting because these are, for the most part, children who haven't gone on an overnight tour yet. Even the older ones haven't. The one or two that are like 11 or 12, they haven't been on an over. I know this. They haven't been on overnight tour yet, but I'm starting to see that. And it's really exciting because that's one of our challenges at lacc, is that we want to find ways to create an environment where that social cohesion can happen with our younger choristers for their benefit. That helps their learning, both with us and in other places. They learn it also for selfish reasons. We want them to stay. We want to see them graduate from high school and cheer them on as they go to college. And the ones who have that social cohesion are more likely to do so, even if singing, you know, they're not going to be a professional singer and they don't really want to, and that's not really going to be their jam. But they love all the other aspects, effects that come with it and how singing makes them feel. It's exciting to see how adding another layer of activity and one that really focuses on social, emotional learning creates that. And it's something that I'm really interested in exploring further in our organization.

[C]

I'm often asked because that's kind of like my research of, like, how did I learn music and what is the best instrument? And really, I feel like one of the. The biggest observation for me in this classes is a lot of fun. These children have so much fun, and there's like, joy. And doing this in a fun way is, I think, a central idea of the way that Michelle has organized and designed these classes. And I think we often forget that music making is fun. It's that as part of music education for children, it's like, it's really good if everybody can sing really well or play their instrument very well. But. But from a humanity perspective, relying on that joy and fun should be a way for us to have access to music in a way that sometimes we immediately forget.

[D]

And what I think is really cool. I remember my first few months at lacc. I heard one of our most advanced choirs that has about 100 choristers in it playing a game with our artistic director and who is also the director of the choir, Fernando Malvaruis. And he, he. They were having so much fun with their game. Their game was like, really, really advanced. An advanced musical activity that like college sophomore music majors probably couldn't do. And they thought it was hilarious and so much fun. And so still something could be very advanced and skill based for those older students and still be a blast. They were having the best time doing these crazy tone clusters that they were then modulating together.

[B]

Thank you all so much for this conversation and for opening up, I think, possibilities to these specific kids, but also to. I started the conversation this way. We're always hopeful that, like, everybody will want to participate in these kinds of activities. I think just in the one minute we had left, if there's just some sort of. And asal. I think you've already sort of shared a little bit about this, but if there's a takeaway from this for you personally, maybe we could just end with that. For me, I'll say that watching the kids participate from the beginning of the year to the end of the year is so meaningful for me to see the growth that they have, the social cohesion that you've mentioned, their interaction with one another, their perception of other people in the space, to me changes just even in the brief times that I see them. So I'll open it up to you all if there's just a quick takeaway that you might share that might encourage others to use music learning as part of their classroom or other. Other activities with kids.

[C]

I can say that, well, without the right now absence of having done all the post testing, from my observation, their accessibility to their emotions, different ways, Michelle, that they have learned from you to verbalize their emotion, embody their emotion, draw their emotion. And that's a huge skill for a child to learn. And I've seen that from beginning to just this last week, how much that has changed and how every child is a lot more comfortable and okay to have access to these emotions. So really kudos to you for that.

[E]

Thank you. I'd say I love that they have permission to voice their ideas and that they get the confidence, the self awareness and then the confidence to express those in a safe way. And that I see them being more brave as we've gone on. And I think that has been really like heartwarming, eye opening and gratifying to see that process.

[D]

I'd like to second what Asal or third what Asal said. And the second one, Michelle said. Something that I love about opera is there's an entry point for everyone. There truly is, because even, you know, obviously music, but vocal music, instrumental music, acting, linguistics, cultural exploration, but also visual art. And I think sometimes that gets overlooked. I mean, obviously we're looking at beautiful costumes and sets, or less beautiful ones, depending on what production you're seeing. But I do think that that is a very important aspect and a very important entry point in opera. And it was really interesting to see in the classes. Michelle had, I think two or three sessions where our choristers got to draw and connect music to art. And it was, and I've seen this before with kids, but it was very powerful. And it's something that in sort of traditional, quote unquote arts education, we don't have that many aspects, many art, that many arts happening at once. Once. But that's just the natural place of opera. Opera is all the arts happening at once. And I think that was incredibly enriching for our choristers and some who couldn't verbalize as much their emotions or they weren't quite ready to say it. They share that in a brave space, visually, by drawing. It was profound, profound. And I encourage the opportunity to have non verbal communication and arts instruction. And we don't very much at lacc. And I think it's really important. And this really reminded me of that importance. And it doesn't even have to be drawing. It could be making collages from, you know, magazines. It could be, you don't have to know how to draw to express yourself non verbally and also the movement for those who are more kinesthetic learners. Oftentimes we do allow movement in lacc, but it's a lot of standing still being able to move around this much makes a big difference for our kinesthetic learners. So you're all here because you're interested in opera and education. But just remember, opera is all the arts. Opera is every entry point and it's an incredibly powerful tool for children and adults. Thank you everybody.

[B]

Thank you so much again for sharing your expertise and for creating this collaboration. Thank you us all for for making this happen and pulling us all together for this.

[C]

Yeah. Thank you Andrea for putting everything together for today.

[E]

Thank you so much.

[B]

Thanks everybody.

[A]

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