PITTSBURGH — On a rainy afternoon in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania, a group of amateur musicians gathered to lay down a few tracks.
This wasn't the first time the band had performed together, but it was their first time in a recording studio.
"Lots of people lock up the first time they're put in headphones," said Jim Barr, the recording engineer at Heid Studios. "I've heard some real train wrecks."
Far from a train wreck, the session proved a heartfelt success. The band, which calls itself Infinity, debuted its work at the 2022 Pittsburgh Schizophrenia Conference in November. They closed the conference with an original track, "This, Infinity," as well as the song "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and the 1969 hit "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head."
All four band members — a guitarist, a bassist and two vocalists — are diagnosed with schizophrenia, a mental disorder that can cause people to interpret reality in abnormal ways. It can cause hallucinations, delusions and other kinds of disordered thinking.
"All of us in the quartet have schizophrenia. All of us rock," singer Anne Alter wrote in a blog post after the recording session.
"I struggled, as always, with stage fright. ... All difficulty aside, I loved it. It felt magical. It felt like home."
Infinity formed five years ago when Flavio Chamis, a Brazilian composer and conductor who trained with Leonard Bernstein, began working with UPMC on how to use music to treat mental illness.
"Having a mental health diagnosis is not a reason to not have a creative life," Chamis said.
Schizophrenia can be disabling, but therapy, medication and even playing music can help, according to a growing body of research.
Originally, Chamis was hoping to start an orchestra modeled after the Me/Orchestra project founded by a former Pittsburgher in Burlington, Vermont. That organization now has affiliate ensembles in Boston, Atlanta and Portland, Oregon. But funding was tough to find, and plans to found a Pittsburgh chapter have floundered.
Still, Chamis and K.N. Roy Chengappa, a professor of psychiatry at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital and the director of Pittsburgh's schizophrenia conference, are continuing their efforts with the four musicians and to further investigate musical interventions in mental health outcomes.
"Music and things outside of traditional psychiatry and medicine seem to do a lot for the severely mentally ill," Chengappa said.
As imaging techniques advance, scientists are working to answer precisely why music affects the brain in the ways that it does.
Playing music seems to have an impact on timing systems in the brain, which are affected by bipolar disorder major depression, schizophrenia and other illnesses. There is research indicating that training patients to play in rhythm can in fact help retrain the brain in other, less obvious ways.
Interventions tend to have positive, anecdotal effects. But the research is still in early stages.
Infinity's recording session took place at Heid Studios in Aspinwall. Heid is a deep-rooted name familiar to Pittsburgh's jazz musicians, as many of the city's greats have recorded there.
"I'm the president, CEO and janitor," joked George Heid, who was sitting in on the session.
"Hear that? Barry's really kicking it in there," Heid said, nodding toward guitarist Barry Mill's booth.
The band doesn't have much formal music training, but they played and sang with touching sincerity.
"It's not supposed to be professional or perfect," Chengappa said. "The patients are emboldened, empowered — one of them has been my patient for 20 years. ... They've developed this connection and really blossomed."
Pittsburgh's schizophrenia conference has been online since the pandemic. Each year it draws 200-300 participants, a mix of professionals and patients. It's intended to give patients hope by showing that research is continuing.
Chengappa, who said he couldn't sing in the shower to save his life, explained that while there is some institutional interest in putting funding into researching music therapy outcomes, it's not a priority.
He said that the National Institutes for Health is more interested in mechanistic research than in intervention-based research. In other words, the NIH is prioritizing research that helps understand a biological or behavioral process rather than research that tests out different therapies and their results.
Still, intervention-based studies are showing promising results.
"Biological research has shown that of course it can reduce stress and lift you up from depressed moods, which can have a host of other benefits," Chengappa said. "All these studies show that."
He pointed to studies showing that when Buddhist monks chant, their brains and neurophysiology show increased synchronization and calmness, and to a study performed in a Chinese psych ward that showed "tremendous improvement" for patients exposed to music by Beethoven. Chengappa added that more research was needed, of course.
Chamis led the Infinity recording from the piano, with each musician in a separate sound-proof booth listening to one another on headphones. The conductor and composer encouraged the musicians and gave advice after each take
"Let's try singing that phrase all in one breath," he told the singers, Alter and Susan Padilla.
He's volunteering his time to work with the group, which rehearses and plays together regularly. He also wrote the music for Infinity's original track and is mixing the tracks himself.
"It's been great working on this with Flavio," said guitarist David Baird.
"I loved the headphones and the sound controls and repeatedly giving our director the things he asked for," Alter said. "I loved feeling like a professional. ... I want more."
