Documentary series The Nerve explores how music informs the human experience
Episode One looks at the relationship between music and the brain.
Whether you're a karaoke assassin, or classical music scholar, a jazz aficionado or dance club kid, you've probably had some elementary but central questions about music. Why does it exist? How does it wield such power over us?
Those questions, asked across almost every genre, fuel a six-part documentary series called The Nerve. The immersive audio experience first aired on CBC in 2008 and is being reprised this summer on IDEAS.
The Nerve was created by the Peabody Award-winning team behind another great music series, The Wire: The Impact of Electricity on Music.
Episode 1 of The Nerve explores the relationship between music and the brain. It's called Wired for Sound.
The Nerve is produced by Paolo Pietropaolo, Chris Brookes, and host Jowi Taylor.
**Note: this series is not available for download and is available for listening in Canada only due to music copyright restrictions.
Guests in this episode:
- Bruce Cockburn is a musician.
- Daniel Levitin is a neuroscientist and the author of This is Your Brain on Music.
- Jimena Llopis is a consultant and former head of business development at Music Intelligence Solutions.
- Marshall Chasin is a Doctor of Audiology
- Ellen Dissanayake is an ethologist.
- Larry Kirkegaard is a principal acoustician at Kirkegaard Associates.
- Suzanne Cusick is a music historian and musicologist.
- David Harrington is a musician in the Kronos Quartet.
- Sandra Trehub is a psychologist who studies how music affects children and infants.
Episode 1 features music from these artists and composers:
- Rodgers and Hammerstein
- Julie Andrews
- Arvo Pärt
- Antonin Dvorak
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Stevie Wonder
- Arnold Schoenberg
- Radiohead
- The Beatles
- Maurice Ravel
- Judy Garland
- Amjad Ali Khan
- The Royal Yogyakarta Palace Gamelan
- Peter Tchaikovsky
- The Rolling Stones