An Antidote to Loneliness

Grab a friend, a family member, a date, even a total stranger, and bring them along to a Bella Voce concert. Have dinner together beforehand and share your stories. Say hello to your fellow concertgoers. You’ll be improving your health and doing your part to quell America’s loneliness epidemic, and you’ll enjoy the experience more than you would alone.

Don't believe it? It’s science. Read on:

You may have heard: U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has declared an Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, warning of its harmful consequences. From his 2023 advisory report: 

"Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling—it harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death."

Dr. Murthy calls us to take better care of ourselves and others, look in on one another and to share space, and to build more connected lives and better-connected communities.

"If we fail to do so, we will pay an ever-increasing price in the form of our individual and collective health and well-being. And we will continue to splinter and divide until we can no longer stand as a community or a country. Instead of coming together to take on the great challenges before us, we will further retreat to our corners—angry, sick, and alone."

Think about that.

Loneliness isn’t just bad for our individual health and well-being, it hurts entire communities and society as a whole. And it’s our responsibility to heal ourselves and protect each other from the epidemic illness of loneliness. That’s heavy.

Friends, Bella Voce is here to help!

Attending a Bella Voce concert, like other shared experiences, counteracts the forces of isolation. Coming together in the concert hall fosters interpersonal connection within the audience, and between members of the larger community. Better still, you'll enjoy the music you hear live and in person more than you would a recording. This isn’t just marketing mumbo-jumbo. There is real science behind it. 

In a pair of 2014 studies published in Psychological Science, Yale’s Erica Boothby and colleagues “…explicitly tested the hypothesis that merely having a simultaneous experience with another person enhances that experience," and successfully demonstrated in the first study that “shared experiences are amplified—even when the coexperiencers do not communicate about what they are experiencing.” In other words, people like what they see and hear more in company than alone. 

Boothby's second study indicated the reason for this is the strengthening connection between coexperiencers: “…people think more about someone who is present with them when they are sharing an experience with that person than when they are not, and people are more absorbed in shared than in unshared experiences.” What better way to build community can you think of? 

So come to a Bella Voce concert. Become part of the Bella Voce community. Come with a friend. Come solo and make new friends. Lose yourself in Bella Voce's pristine sonorities. Share the experience with others who love music, and love it just a little bit more.

Together.