Monique Mead

Monique Mead has been a lifelong advocate for the healing power of music. Her career as a professional violinist spans three decades performing on major international stages throughout North America and Europe. This artistic excellence infuses her Sound Healing practice, trainings, and research. 

As Teaching Professor and Director of Music Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Monique has created the first university course in sound healing, established a student-run sound bath program at CMU and most recently trained medical students at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) who founded a sound bath program to help their peers better manage stress.

In 2025 she will launch a CMU course called Sonic Innovation: AI, Sound Healing, and Entrepreneurial Solutions for Global Wellness. In a collaboration with behavioral health researches at Pitt, Monique developed a sound bath protocol and conducted a 2024 study on 240+ participants at CMU to discover how it affects mood and stress. Results showed a 70% decrease in stress and an 80% increase in ability to relax and focus after one session.

For her groundbreaking work in this field, she was awarded a grant from the American College Health Association in 2024 and recently presented her research at the Global Arts Conference in April 2025. In 2021, Monique opened a sound healing studio at the Awareness & Wellness Center, a mental health practice in Pittsburgh, where she provides a various sound healing experiences and a practitioner certification program. To better train others, she invented a notation system called SonicScore to map soundscapes, and currently has a sound bath training app under development to facilitate remote training and make the sounds of singing bowls more accessible.

Monique’s cutting-edge research on sound therapy, evidence-based training, large-scale performances, and passion for peace have captured local and international attention. In 2025, Monique staged the first Mega Surround Sound Bath with 20 practitioners and 60+ singing bowls encircling participants lying on the pews of Heinz Chapel in Pittsburgh, as featured in a front-page article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, NPR, CBS, and the Sounds Heal podcast.

A lover of nature, yoga, and organic cuisine, Monique enjoys directing an annual music festival at Rancho La Puerta, a premiere wellness resort in Mexico, where she first discovered sound healing. She invites you to explore the timeless world of sound and the transformative power of deep listening.

Interview With Professor Monique Mead

Q: What first drew you to sound healing, and how did that differ from your classical training?

Monique Mead:
I was performing in Mexico at a spa and resort called Rancho La Puerta. As a classical violinist, you’re naturally pretty high strung. Your mind is often busy with performance, perfection, and other stressful thoughts, That afternoon I went to my first sound bath. I lay on the floor while someone played these large quartz singing bowls, and I noticed the sound just took over the thoughts in my mind and wiped them completely clear.

I lost track of time. What felt like ten minutes was actually an hour. I came out relaxed and free, like my brain had been cleared. That made a huge impression. I started studying the effect of sound on the brain. Years later, when the pandemic hit, everyone around me was stressed--my students at Carnegie Mellon, my neighbors, people everywhere. That’s when I remembered the singing bowls, so with my U.S. government stimulus check, I bought my first set of singing bowls and began figuring out how to use them to ease stress.

Q: For someone new to it, what happens during one of your sound baths, what goes on in the mind and the body?

Monique Mead:
When you arrive at my studio, the first thing you encounter is the scent of aromatherapy with soothing lavender and eucalyptus. That immediately brings you into an awareness of your senses. You put your belongings away, take off your shoes, and lie down on very comfortable bean-bag loungers with a blanket and an eye pillow. People describe it as feeling cocooned, hugged, and safe.

I start by getting you into your body with gentle breathwork and a guided check-in with your senses: what you see, feel, hear, and awareness of any emotions, physical tension, and mental activity you’re carrying. We return to that at the end to notice what has shifted. I generally accompany the breathwork with drum or ocean-wave sounds to ease you into a flow.

Then I invite you to set an intention for the session. It could be peace of mind, letting go of a heavy emotion, or whatever you might need. From there, I begin playing the singing bowls in a sequence. First, grounding, helping you feel safe and present. Then I use rhythm and sound to dissolve your sense of time, guiding you inward. Our bodies naturally entrain—or sync up—with external rhythms, so an intentional combination of rhythm and frequencies can bring you down into theta or even delta brainwave state, which is where deep rest occurs and the body’s natural healing instinct kicks in.

My intention is to keep you there long enough for your nervous system to reset, so I play a longer soundscape that sustains a deeply relaxed state. At the end, I bring you back out, with gentle sounds that create a sense of expansion so that you ease out of it feeling open and light. Then we return to breath and awareness and a body scan to notice the shift before I close out with a final melody on the violin.

Q: Where does the violin fit into your sessions?

Monique Mead:
I often play Bach at the beginning or other music that feels grounding and secure. I’ll walk through the room as I play so people can feel the instrument’s vibration up close. That alone pulls them out of their heads and into what’s happening in the present moment.

At the end, I’ll play the violin again, often something familiar, even a pop song. That helps gently bring the mind to an alpha state: relaxed, lightly focused, ready to re-engage. The bowls and gongs work deeply on the body and nervous system; the violin touches the heart and helps bridge back to everyday awareness.

Q: Was there a moment when you realized music can transform not just individuals but an entire community?

Monique Mead:
During the pandemic, everyone seemed to be suffering from isolation and loneliness, and musicians were all home-bound because they had nowhere to perform. My neighbors happen to have large, flat lawns across from my porch, so we started a porch concert series to bring people together in a safe way. My students and other musicians would play, and people sat outside, distanced, and connected through the rhythms and melodies of the music—from classical to jazz to tango.

We started with only a few neighbors, but soon, the lawn filled up and we wound up offering concerts every weekend for 7 months. People even came with coats and hand warmers when it got cold—and we put out fire pits! The following year we did it again, and when the pandemic ended, people still insisted we continue, so now in 2025, our sixth year, we get anywhere between 150-250 on the lawn for any given concert. We don’t advertise and we don’t sell tickets; people just show up and bring their friends because they feel part of something special. It builds community in a world that still feels oddly disconnected.

Q: How do you support students dealing with anxiety, perfectionism, or burnout?

Monique Mead:
I’ve found that you can talk to people about stress management and that can be effective over time, but nothing compares with an immediate, direct experience of a calm and tranquil mind, and that’s what you can deliver in a sound bath! I find sound baths powerful because they’re neutral: the sound of singing bowls isn’t tied to any genre of music or previous associations that people might like or dislike. Since 2023, I’ve been conducting research on sound and stress and establishing student- and staff-run sound bath programs where students, faculty and staff can drop in weekly for 20–50 minutes. They lie down, their mental stress gets wiped clean, and they come out with immediate relaxation and the bandwidth of a fresh start. So far, these college sound baths have proven to be popular and effective at Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh, and now there’s demand from other universities in the U.S. and even Indonesia.

Q: What do people misunderstand about the emotional and mental life of classical musicians?

Monique Mead:
People often say, “It must be wonderful to work at something you love,” and it is, but being a professional musician is also relentlessly demanding. There’s constant performance stress; you never really have weekends off because that’s when you typically perform, and you have to keep the daily discipline of practicing to stay in top performance shape—it’s like being a professional athlete.

And orchestral life is uniquely stressful--I’ve heard that it’s considered the second most stressful job after air-traffic controller! Contributing factors are that you have no personal space; someone sits right next to you; any mistake you make is immediately noticed; there's no agency over what you play or even what you wear; and on top of that, you have limited freedom of expression because those decisions are largely made by the conductor. While all of that translates into beautiful music, those stressors add up!

Q: Has there been a time when music helped you through grief, fear, or total overwhelm?

Monique Mead:
Absolutely. Around 2018, everything converged: divorce, a move, and two teenagers to care for as a single mom. In the midst of that I was asked to perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in 2019, one of the hardest concertos in the violin repertoire. I had always dreamed of playing that concerto at age 50, thinking I’d be "mature enough” by then, and here I was--almost 50 and feeling like I could barely survive!

Practicing felt impossible with so much chaos, and I nearly gave up on learning the concerto. But at the moment of quitting, I had this inner conversation where I felt Beethoven saying to me, “If I could write this music as a deaf person, maybe you can figure out a way to play it.” And suddenly the truth emerged that for me, this concerto was about overcoming adversity and making peace with it. Practicing became my lifeline, a source of beauty and clarity that helped me manage everything else.

Right after my 50th birthday, I got on stage and performed this glorious concerto—a testament to the indomitable human spirit that lived in Beethoven and lives in each of us. After climbing that mountain, it occurred to me that perhaps the message of this music might be able to help others, and so I launched “Beethoven in the Face of Adversity,” offering 50 performances in 250 days of the Beethoven Concerto to anyone facing hardship, physical or mental health challenges, trauma, or any other type of adversity. Immediately, the requests started coming in starting with survivors of the recent shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Most of these performances were accompanied on the piano by my 15-yr. old son Tino. Everywhere we went, we spoke to the people and collected their stories, hearing what keeps them going through their challenges.

On Beethoven’s birthday in 2019, I played the culminating performance with the Edgewood Symphony at Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh as a triumph over adversity and displayed the stories of the people I visited. That experience changed me.

Just 2 months later in 2020, when the music world planned to celebrate Beethoven’s 250th, the pandemic hit and all the concert stages went silent, we all went “deaf” together, and global adversity hit. This was the final catalyst for me to step fully into dedicating my life to provide healing through music and sound.

Chloé Kiffer

Franco-American violinist Chloé Kiffer has been praised by The New York Times for her “pure and beautiful tone” and by The Greenwich Sentinel as “a star in every sense: performance, exquisite technique, and beauty.”

She has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, and Asia, performing in prestigious venues such as the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Salle Cortot in Paris, Beethoven Hall in Bonn, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Hall, the Tel Aviv Opera, Beijing National Center, Shanghai Oriental Hall, and Lincoln Center. In 2015, she made her Carnegie Hall debut in Stern Auditorium with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.

Kiffer is on the violin and chamber music faculty at the Manhattan School of Music and previously served as an assistant professor of violin at the University of North Texas. Her students have won prizes in national and international competitions, and she is in demand worldwide as a guest teacher and festival faculty member. Recent appearances include the Heifetz International Music Institute, MusicFest Perugia (Italy), Artists of Korea (Seoul), MusicAlps (France), Kaufman MusicFest (New York), Chamber Music International (Dallas), Texas Chamber Music Institute, and the Paris International Music Academy.

A laureate of the Bleustein-Blanchet Foundation, Kiffer studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris before completing postgraduate degrees at the Manhattan School of Music under Patinka Kopec and Pinchas Zukerman, followed by a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Stony Brook University.

In 2019, she released an album of Ravel’s violin sonatas with her husband, pianist Alexandre Moutouzkine, on the Steinway & Sons label. She performs on a violin crafted for her in 2023 by Brooklyn luthier Samuel Zygmuntowicz.

Interview with Dr. Chloé Kiffer

Q: You’ve performed all over the world and trained extensively. How has your relationship with the violin changed through personal adversity?
The violin has been with me for as long as I can remember, through both joyful and difficult times. In moments of celebration, it became a way to share energy and joy with others. In harder seasons, it was a companion, helping me express pain while also carrying me forward. Those experiences deepened my relationship with the instrument; it’s no longer just about performing, but about living with it day to day. I often remind my students that the violin can be more than an instrument. It can become a partner through every stage of life.

Q: What role does emotion play in technique when you’re teaching? Can technical discipline and vulnerability really go hand in hand?
A strong technical foundation is what gives you the freedom to let emotion take over. In practice, I encourage my students to approach technique with a clear plan: focusing on bow pressure, bow division, contact point, vibrato, and all the other tools that shape sound. These elements are the framework that makes expression possible. In the practice room, it’s “technique first, emotion second.” But on stage, the two must work together. Once the basics are secure, technique becomes almost invisible, allowing students to take risks, shape phrases with intention, and let their personalities shine through.

Q: How do you help students find joy or meaning again in their playing after they’ve hit a plateau or gone through something hard?
Teachers who see their students weekly or biweekly often notice shifts in their state of mind sooner than the students realize. When I sense that someone is feeling disconnected or stuck, my role is to redirect their practice in ways that reawaken curiosity. If the brain repeats the same patterns too long, it becomes bored and unchallenged. Variety is essential. That might mean experimenting with reverse bowings, new rhythms, or adding slurs to familiar passages. In lessons, it might mean creating opportunities to perform for peers in studio class, where feedback and inspiration can spark new motivation. By changing the approach and introducing fresh challenges, students often rediscover both progress and joy in their playing.

Q: Can music be healing even if it’s not formally called “music therapy”?
Absolutely. Music doesn’t need the label of “therapy” to be healing, it has a way of reaching us directly, whether we’re playing, listening, or sharing it with others. I’ve seen students arrive at a lesson stressed or overwhelmed, and by the end, simply through making music, their entire energy has shifted. The same has been true for me in moments when I’ve needed calm or clarity, music has provided it. Healing can happen in those everyday encounters with music, without any formal structure at all.

Q: Do you think classical music still has the same emotional power in an age of digital overload and emotional numbness?
Absolutely, perhaps even more so today. In a world of scrolling and constant background noise, classical music offers the chance to pause, listen deeply, and truly feel. It reminds us to use emotion and connection in the rush of daily life.