Harold O'Neal

Harold O'Neal is a pianist, composer, recording artist, speaker, and creative visionary working at the intersection of music, storytelling, and human connection. A former Aspen Ideas Fellow, he led Aspen Ideas Festival’s immersive workshop “The Art of Music and Storytelling” and has collaborated with Pixar on Soul, served as music director for George Clooney’s inaugural Albie Awards, and spoken for organizations including NASA, Google, and the World Economic Forum.

Five Chords Turn Personal Stories Into Musical Scores

At the Aspen Ideas Festival, pianist Harold O’Neal led a workshop arguing that music can be used as a practical language for framing experience, even by people with no formal musical training. O’Neal reduced harmony to five felt energies — rising, grounded, condensed, chaotic and floating — and asked participants to map them onto short personal stories. His broader claim was that conflict, ambiguity and interpretation are not obstacles to storytelling but part of how people give meaning to what happened.

The Aspen InstituteJun 27, 202616 min read