What's In a Name?
What do majestic stoney mountains and soaring gothic architecture have in common?
The way we feel when we are inside them.
That feeling is Resonance, the patterns of vibration of one object harmonizing at a similar vibration within us. This sympathetic frequency is sensuous and aesthetic, creating an experience.
Resonance is about compassionate affinity, understanding, relationship, a sympathetic response that is in harmony with another’s being.
With all of our knowledge, powers of instant communication, and technology, we are yet to perfect the creation of a joyful, harmonious civilization. A society with resonance.
This is our task, establishing resonance within conversations, deliberations, mediations, and the like. We do this with the most natural means of (literally) creating harmony: music.
Our Mission is to offer live music as a tool benefitting conflict resolution. We work globally to bring people together through music and science.
Music doesn’t just help us feel, it helps us become. That process of change, seeing the world from another’s perspective, is the secret to overcoming conflict. Neuroscience has demonstrated that live music is one of the simplest and best catalysts to make this possible, empowering people to transform situations of difficulty into those of empathy.
What We Do
Research shows that live music can stimulate brainwave synchronization of two or more people, facilitating the creation of mutually beneficial solutions. TRP explores this potential in a way that opens the door of possibilities.
Blog
Interviews with leading musicians of the world, discussing how they see a relationship between music and building a world at peace, or at least a world in which we learn how to listen and respond to each other with empathy and compassion.
References
Examples, throughout history, of this type of project – from the Congress of Vienna in 1814 to the Christmas Truce of 1914 to the early conception of The Resonance Project in 2014.
Do you have an upcoming deliberation, facilitation, or mediation that you would like to engage us to help you with? We can provide up to 15 minutes of live music (virtual or in person) to set the stage for resolution. Contact us here.
Our Founder’s Story
It all began with a concert. Classical guitarist, Julian Bream, was playing at the Kennedy Center. The only thing on the massive concert hall stage was one chair, one guitar, and one player. The house was full to capacity, some 4000 people listening so intently that I wondered if I should hold my breath so as not to interfere with other people’s obvious state of bliss. The audible sounds of the audiences’ collective, joyful exhale accompanied the end of each selection.
I was not yet in college but already knew I wanted to devote my life to making music, but more to the point, to create the affect that I had witnessed in that concert – an affect I would play host to, thousands of times again, in other concerts: transformation.
A Think Tank Idea
The Resonance Project consists of musicians and neuroscientists who have come together to find a solution to the pressing problem which faces us all: how to increase empathy throughout the world. We believe that this is an idea that is ripe for development and right in sync with the way the world is evolving. We wish to create a legacy of music that is especially effective in deepening awareness, patience, and most importantly, insight. In time, this can become a new paradigm for social discourse.
Integral to our vision is the interaction between scientists and artists, and between scientists and other scientists. We aim to create a think-tank composed of leading neuroscientists and scholars from universities across the United States. We will generate an infrastructure that facilitates communication of new ideas. The outcome of this Think Tank will lead to a journal publication.
TRP, a California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation, can provide a small ensemble of exceptional musicians for negotiation settings, potentially anyplace in the world. If this work interests you, I invite you to reach out to us directly to learn how you might become engaged in our endeavor. Together we can meet the growing need for improved collaboration and conversation between peoples.
Our nonprofit organization is young and is mostly run by volunteer efforts, but we do pay musicians, pay a consultant, have office needs, and the like. If you care to help us build a widening foundation of Common Ground and recognition of each other’s humanity in the world, please consider making a donation on our Donate page, or by mailing a check to us.
— Jonathan Dimmock, Founder