LSO believes in the power of music as a way to connect people and provide healing. This funding would support 10 years of Harmony in Healing, where LSO partners with hospitals, memory care centers, assisted living facilities, hospice care centers, and rehabilitation centers to perform live music for patients. This project was piloted with limited-time funding, and requires a new source of underwriting in order to continue.

Lincoln's Symphony Orchestra's mission is to present inspiring experiences that welcome all members of our community to discover and cultivate a profound, personal connection with live orchestral music. LSO works to ensure that we are truly welcoming all members of our community with initiatives including affordable ticket prices for every concert along with complimentary tickets to military veterans, immigrant and refugee families through a partnership with LPS's Family Literacy, and human service organizations serving at-risk clients facing unique challenges (such as the loss of a parent, domestic violence, substance abuse, or financial hardship).

Additionally, LSO acknowledges the reality that there are many who are unable to attend performances at a traditional concert venue, due to physical limitations. In 2018, LSO's Innovation Committee developed Harmony in Healing, with a budget to pilot three years of performances. Small groups include brass quintets, woodwind quintets, string quartets and trios, piano and violin duos, and solo instruments.

The program reflects LSO's belief that music can be more than entertainment, and that it is an elementally human activity. Medical and psychological research has shown that music can be a meaningful contributor to general health and wellness. Music provides a compelling vehicle for learning about ourselves, expressing our identities, and emotionally handling the happenings in our lives. Among populations with physical and psychological challenges, music can be even more powerful. The act of sharing music is deeply meaningful, and the intimacy and profound impact is even more pronounced when a musician plays in the room of a patient recovering from cardiac surgery, rehabilitating from a traumatic brain injury, or fighting memory loss.

LSO musicians are given special training, including recommendations for programming and interacting in ways that bridge the psychological performer-audience divide; providing strategies for connecting with people who do not exhibit typical audience behaviors because they are facing cognitive and memory-related challenges; and a script for entering patient rooms with the AIDET protocol used by hospitals and care homes in Lincoln (Acknowledge, Introduce, Duration, Explain, Thank).

During the pandemic, at our partners' request, LSO created video performances that were made available throughout the season. These were streamed to residents and caregivers directly, or broadcast on each facility's closed-circuit television.

With funding from The Big Give, presented by UBT, we look forward to returning to an expanded number of in-person performances, in addition to producing one video each season that each facility can utilize flexibly in the way that best suits their needs.