Communiqué

Ronald Braunstein was on a trajectory to being one of the world’s leading conductors. After graduating from Juilliard, at age twenty-four, he was the first American to win the Von Karajan Conducting Competition and went on to conduct major orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony and the Tokyo Symphony, among many others. When he made his diagnosis of bipolar disorder public, he was shunned by the classical music community. Terminated from his last position with a community orchestra and nearly destitute, Braunstein decided to start an orchestra for people like himself.

Along with wife, Caroline Whiddon, a career orchestra executive who was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, Braunstein founded the first Me2/Orchestra in Burlington, Vermont, and later a second group in Boston. Me2/Orchestra is changing the lives of these musicians in ways they never imagined. Roughly half the musicians are living with diagnoses of bipolar disorder, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, associative disorder, borderline personality, depression, and addiction. The rest have no diagnoses. And, that’s the point. Me2/Orchestra is a groundbreaking, transformative model for erasing mental health stigma where acceptance and understanding are the priority.

The film follows Braunstein and several of the musicians for two years — capturing their setbacks and the accomplishments. It culminates in a joyous concert combining both orchestras for the first time — a triumph for Braunstein, who thought he might never conduct again, the musicians and the audience – who will never think about mental illness in the same way.