Suleika Jaouad, Writer
Jon Batiste, Musician

“Oncology wards, more than anywhere else I know, are music-less places,” wrote Suleika Jaouad as part of Life, Interrupted, the Emmy award-winning New York Times column and video series she wrote while hospitalized for leukemia shortly after graduating from Princeton University in 2010. Jon Batiste changed that by bringing his band to visit her oncology ward, “its inhabitants rejoicing in a temporary timeout, losing themselves to the beauty and healing power of music.” Now married, the New York Times bestselling author and multiple Grammy Award-winning musician together launch a new season of our “Healing with Music” series with a conversation, permeated by live performance of works meaningful to Suleika’s recovery, about music’s role through illness and how they have managed to convert isolation into art. The event will explore both silence — the moments when the impulse is not to create but to hide — and the beauty that can be mined from those music-less places. Join us in celebrating music’s sustaining magic with a couple that has inspired hundreds of thousands of people through their commitment to the healing power of art.

ABOUT THE HEALING WITH MUSIC SERIES

Humans have been using sounds as a way to exist and endure since the start of time. As we return to the concert hall after the trauma of a pandemic, we will be guided by artists whose stories of resilience in facing illness and personal upheaval shed light on music’s profound impact in events combining conversation and live performance. You can share your own story of music’s restorative role in your life here.