The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is a globally-acclaimed symphony orchestra founded in 1904. Keen to give audience members a deeper connection with its concerts, the LSO wanted its branding and artwork to authentically reflect the experience of listening to the Orchestra. The LSO’s design agency, Design Bridge and Partners, contacted Professor Maria Chait at the UCL Ear Institute, to discuss a collaboration.
Having previously applied similar research techniques to a music familiarity project with The Guardian, Professor Chait suggested measuring brain activity, heart rate and skin conductance on people listening to a piece of music featured in the LSO’s programme. The data could then be used by Design Bridge and Partners to develop corresponding artwork. Supported by UCL Consultants, the project was confirmed, and the team worked together to supply data for the LSO artwork for the 2024/25 and the 2025/26 season.
Understanding the brain’s response to music
“It’s really important to the LSO that their artistic visualisations of music are anchored in truth,” Professor Chait explained. “They want visually striking images that reflect something real. The team is really interested in making audience members think – not just about the music – but its effects on the brain and how it makes you feel.”
Professor Chait and team members from her lab of neuroscientists, psychologists and engineers applied the techniques they use in their research to the project. Led by postdoctoral fellows Dr Adele Simon and Dr Alex Billig, they used electroencephalography (EEG) – a non-invasive way of measuring brain activity through electrodes placed on the head. As such, the team was able to gather a series of readings as music was played.
Three LSO audience members were invited to take part, and they were played ‘Jupiter’ from Gustav Holst’s The Planets. A total of 64 sensors were used on each person to track brain activity, supported by additional sensors monitoring heart rate and skin conductance, to capture the nuances of their responses to the music.
The data was processed by software commonly used in the auditory neuroscience field, adapted by Dr Simon for this specific scenario. “When you record someone’s brain activity in response to music, you get their response to music – but also everything else around them,” Dr Simon said. “We have a pre-processing routine in the lab to extract responses that are specific to the music, by relating the music signal to the brain activity. This is something we do routinely for research, so we could do the same for this project.”
When the team was satisfied the data was solely related to the music, they passed it over to the design agency, who led the creative process to turn it into imagery, including website artwork, posters and videos. Hailed a success by the LSO, Design Bridge and Partners, the team collaborated again for the LSO’s 2025/26 season, which has been recently announced. This season the artwork was created based on Tchaikovsky Symphony No 4.
Promoting public understanding of hearing loss
“It was a pleasant surprise to be contacted to work on this project,” Professor Chait said. “The LSO is a legend! It’s a privilege to work with them. Being involved in a creative project like this is also an opportunity to raise public awareness about the importance of protecting your hearing.”
Hearing loss is a huge personal, societal and economic problem. According to Professor Chait, it’s also the strongest modifiable cause of dementia. If more people are aware that they should be monitoring for hearing loss throughout their lives, interventions can be made early to prevent more extreme consequences of hearing loss.
Music enjoyment is something that people can permanently lose when their hearing worsens. Many people don’t realise that although hearing aids can improve speech perception, they’re not so effective at improving the music listening experience. “This is a unique and really important opportunity for the public to understand this,” Professor Chait said. “There are things you can do when you’re young, and when you’re older, to prevent serious hearing loss. We’re hoping this collaboration with the LSO will also be a channel to start this conversation so we can improve the quality of life for people.”
Proving that academic expertise can have a huge variety of applications in the real world, Professor Chait believes collaborations like this have value for everyone involved. While Professor Chait was supported by UCL Consultants to navigate the business side of working with a large partner, the team members in her lab gained experience in applying their work outside of academia too.
“We had less time than we normally would for an experiment, people were filming us, and it required the concentrated effort of a lot of people,” Professor Chait said. “It was hugely interesting for us all to talk to LSO about the scientific aspect of the work, to understand their perspectives and what they wanted to achieve from it. We’re really looking forward to working with them again on the forthcoming season, and it brings with it the possibility of establishing an enduring link to support public outreach too.”
