1001 Nights at the piano: practicing empathy through music | Tara Kamangar | TEDxLA

Pianist and composer Tara Kamangar offers us three ways of using music to strengthen our imagination and thereby strengthen our capacity for empathy, our ability to imagine ourselves in the place of others. She illustrates her talk with excerpts from her piano arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestral work Scheherazade, inspired by the imaginative heroine of 1001 Nights, and her composition Once There Was and Once There Wasn't for violin and piano.

Tara Kamangar has performed to capacity audiences in North America, Europe and the Middle East, in venues including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Hall, and Cadogan Hall. As a composer, Tara‘s works are featured on the Delos/ Naxos and Evidence Classics/ Harmonia Mundi record labels.
Tara is also an avid recording artist. Her solo album “East of Melancholy” reached the top twenty of the classical Billboard chart and streamed aboard Virgin America flights. Tara is an honors graduate of Harvard University (Social Anthropology) and London’s Royal Academy of Music (Piano Performance).

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Ten years ago,

I had an unforgettable experience
in the form of a writing assignment.

I was asked to write 10 pages
about someone I was really angry with -

but to write not from my perspective,

but rather from the perspective
of that person as a child,

and if I didn't know
about their childhood,

I was asked to invent stories
that seemed likely.

I heard these instructions,
and I thought, "What a waste of time.

What could I possibly learn
about this person

by fictionalizing their childhood?"

As I began to write,

I grew surprised at how this exercise
was jogging my memory.

Each time I started to make up a story
about the person's childhood,

I would recall details from their life
that I hadn't thought of in years.

And in the few cases
that I was really stuck,

I found it easy to invent stories
that seemed possible.

After having written 10 pages,

I felt more empathy for this person
than I would have ever thought possible.

I suddenly understood the words
of the author Graham Greene,

that "Hate is just a failure
of the imagination."

Since I'm a classical pianist,

I then considered how to apply
this exercise to music.

For years, my teachers had suggested

that in order to perform
more convincingly,

that I should enter
into the world of the composer.

And I really struggled with this

because I thought this would
make me feel like an imposter,

that I wouldn't feel
like myself on the stage.

It wasn't until I interpreted this advice
as an exercise in empathy,

as a chance to connect with the composer
across time and space,

that I began to feel free at the piano.

This brings me to the topic
I'd like to discuss today.

Given today's conference
theme of "Imagine,"

and given the recent increase
in hate crimes in many parts of the world,

I'd like to offer
three ways of using music

to strengthen our powers of imagination

and thereby to strengthen
our powers of empathy,

our ability to imagine ourselves
in the place of others.

So, the first way
of using music to this end

is through the active
listening experience,

actively imagining
within the context of the music.

Composer Aaron Copland reminds us

that music provides the broadest
possible vista for the imagination

since it's the most abstract of the arts.

I'm going to play for you some music

to give you a chance
to imagine as you listen.

I'll be playing Scheherazade
by the composer Rimsky-Korsakov.

This music is inspired by
this ancient story known as 1001 Nights,

in which Scheherazade distracts
a sultan from executing her

by telling him fascinating cliff-hangers,

night after night,

for 1001 nights -

so Scheherazade's imagination
saves her life.

This music is written
for a full orchestra,

and so I have adapted it
for the piano for today.

So this is the music that Rimsky-Korsakov
wrote to represent the terrifying sultan.

( Music: Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade)

And then he wrote this to represent
Scheherazade telling her stories.

(Music: Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade)

So you're going to hear these as I play.

We'll each have very different
associations to the music,

and we can't always control
these associations.

For instance,

Rimsky-Korsakov, the composer,

had the neurological condition
known as synesthesia,

so he would involuntarily associate
certain musical harmonies with colors -

so he would describe the key of B Major

as a gloomy dark blue with a steel shine -

often playing in the keys
of E Major and G Major,

which he would have processed
as sapphire blue and brownish gold.

So, we can never hear the music
exactly as the composer would,

or even as the person
sitting next to you would,

but the important thing

is just to actively explore
different possibilities of association.

As Rimsky-Korsakov wrote
in his memoirs on the subject,

he preferred to only slightly direct
the listener's imagination,

and he preferred to leave the details
to the mood and the will of each listener.

So, keeping his words in mind,
I'll play for you a short excerpt,

and I hope you will enjoy listening
with an active imagination.

(Music: Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade)

(Music continues)

(Music continues)

(Music continues)

I'll stop there,

but I hope you noticed the appearance
of Scheherazade in the middle.

(Applause)

Thank you.

Taking this active listening
a step further,

a second way to use music
to strengthen our imagination

is to learn an instrument.

It's one thing to imagine as we listen,
but we can take this even further

when we have to communicate
our ideas through performance,

in the same way that having to write
10 pages was so effective for me.

To give you an example:

when I play the music of Rimsky-Korsakov,

it helps me to remember
that he was not just a composer

but also a naval officer.

He joined, from a very young age,
the Imperial Russian Navy,

and he titled the last section
of Scheherazade,

"The Ship Breaks Against a Cliff
Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman."

So, when I play this section of the music,

I imagine the ocean rising and falling

and Rimsky-Korsakov, the young
naval cadet, in awe of the waters,

and I try to project this as I play.

So, I'll demonstrate for you.

You'll hear the waters
getting stormy and rough.

(Music: Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade)

(Music continues)

I want to stop to point out this section.

So, the music representing the sultan

(Music)

has been transformed into this,

(Music)

suggesting that Scheherazade's stories

have transformed the sultan, over time,
into someone with empathy

who's not going to kill her,

so I'd like to imagine
this transformation as I play.

So, you can see that the music -

performing offers us so many opportunities

to imagine and embody experiences
that are foreign to us.

In the words of the pianist Grigory Kogan,

"The musical score is the sleeping beauty,

and the performer is the prince,
bringing it to life."

As we become better at the instrument,
we start to internalize it,

and this improves our ability
to imagine music in silence.

I've demonstrated that in this video.

I start off playing the composition
on a kitchen table.

Researchers have seen

that the region in our motor cortex
that controls our fingers

expands whether we
are physically playing or imagining.

Oh. There's no sound.

Well, you can imagine.

(Laughter)

(Video) (Music)

This brings me to a third way of using
music to strengthen our imagination:

that of composing.

The composer Bruce Aldophe points out

that if we can imagine
the music that we've heard

and change some elements,

then we started composing -

just like when I had to remember
someone's childhood stories

and extrapolate,

I was starting to write fiction.

We can practice empathy
when we compose

by taking whatever
we are really moved by -

whether it's someone we love

or a story in the news

or the character of Scheherazade -

and we can ask ourselves,
How would this exist in a musical form?

And classical music
is full of examples of this,

ranging from every possible
feeling and experience -

from Hayden's 18th-century opera
The World on the Moon

to Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead,

Prokofiev's satirical opera
For the Love of Three Oranges,

and Beethoven has a great piece

that became known
as "Rage over a Lost Penny."

So there is endless examples.

So I'll demonstrate
this method of composing

with one final performance for you.

And this is of my latest
violin and piano composition

called Once There Was
and Once There Wasn't.

The title is the opening line
of fairy tales in the Middle East.

So it's like saying, "Once upon a time."

And this will feature
the incredible violinist Heather Powell.

I'm so honored to have her
on the violin part today.

(Applause)

So, I hope you will enjoy using the music
to imagine the worlds of others,

whether through active listening

or through learning to play an instrument
or through composing.

Music provides endless opportunity
to practice empathy.

In the words of Alfred Adler,

"Seeing with the eyes of another,

listening with the ears of another,

feeling with the heart of another."

We'll just be playing
the ending of the composition

in the interest of time.

Thank you.

(Piano and violin music)

(Music continues)

(Music continues)

(Music ends)

(Applause)

Thank you so much. Thank you.

(Applause)