More than a thousand strangers will pack Charlotte's Knight Theater on September 26 to learn and perform a favorite song together in three-part harmony, all in under an hour — and every ticket sold helps pay for music therapy, nutrition counseling, and other non-medical care for cancer patients. The event, called Koolulam, is making its first-ever Charlotte appearance, brought to the city by the local nonprofit MusicLand Gift Foundation.
Tickets range from $72 to $198, and groups of 10 or more get a 10% discount off the base price, according to WFAE. Ticket inquiries are being handled by phone at 704-348-5752. The concert takes place at Knight Theater, located at 430 S. Tryon St. in Uptown Charlotte, a 1,192-seat venue that opened in 2009 and sits connected to the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art within the Levine Center for the Arts campus, according to Blumenthal Arts, which operates the theater.
The Charlotte show serves as the centerpiece of “THRIVE: An Extraordinary Day for Cancer Survivorship,” a community fundraising initiative organized by MusicLand Gift Foundation in partnership with Atrium Health Levine Cancer, according to the Atrium Health Foundation. Proceeds benefit Levine Cancer's Department of Supportive Oncology, which provides non-medical patient care including music and art therapy, physical rehabilitation, nutrition counseling, and psycho-oncology, along with a specialized post-graduate fellowship, the foundation says.
A Survivor's Idea Born In Chemo Waiting Rooms
MusicLand Gift Foundation was founded by Charlotte entrepreneur Kenny Kahn, a stage 4 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma survivor treated at Levine Cancer Institute in 2021, alongside his daughter Rachel, after he found music to be a primary source of comfort during aggressive chemotherapy, according to WCNC. The station reports that Kahn started the foundation after noticing many patients endured quiet waiting rooms without music or emotional distractions during treatment.
The department the concert benefits is led by Dr. Declan Walsh, described as an internationally recognized pioneer who launched the first palliative care program in the U.S. at the Cleveland Clinic in 1987 before establishing Levine's integrated supportive care department in 2017, per the Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute. Walsh's model combines palliative care, rehabilitation, and integrative medicine within a single department.
How A Room Full Of Strangers Learns To Sing Together
Koolulam was created in Israel in 2017 by musical conductor Ben Yaffet, artistic director Or Taicher, and entrepreneur Michal Shahaf Shneiderman as a social-musical initiative aimed at bridging social divides through interactive mass singing, according to Parvati Magazine. At each event, audience members are split into soprano, alto, and baritone vocal sections and taught a custom three-part harmony arrangement of a popular song, all without requiring any prior singing experience, per Fun In Jerusalem — with conductors teaching the harmony live before capturing a unified final recording.
The format has scaled dramatically overseas. Koolulam's past gatherings include an 8,000-person event at Latrun, a 12,000-person stadium performance for Israel's 70th Independence Day in 2018, and a 3,000-person trilingual rendition of Matisyahu's “One Day” in Haifa, sung simultaneously in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, according to the Times of Israel. Recordings of those mass singing events have racked up tens of millions of views online.
The Science Behind The Sing-Along
Koolulam's mass-singing model has also drawn academic interest. It was selected for a social psychology study funded by the Templeton Foundation and led by University at Buffalo professor Dr. Shira Gabriel, examining how mass singing induces what researchers call collective effervescence — a sense of unity and transcendence experienced in shared group rituals — to reduce stress and enhance psychological well-being, according to Koolulam.
The Charlotte concert lands as Atrium Health continues expanding its cancer and rehabilitation footprint in the city. The health system reached a construction milestone in May on its $893 million Midtown tower, a 1.1-million-square-foot, 12-floor facility that will physically connect Levine Cancer Institute with the David L. Conlan Rehabilitation Center ahead of a planned 2027 opening. It's a reminder that the September 26 concert, however joyful, is tied to a much larger and ongoing buildout of cancer care infrastructure in the region.
What song Charlotte's audience will learn together has not yet been announced, and neither MusicLand Gift Foundation nor Atrium Health has released an overall fundraising target for the THRIVE campaign. It's also unclear how patients at regional satellite clinics outside Uptown Charlotte will access the supportive oncology services the concert is meant to fund.
