Deanna Hoying turned her love for music into a career, which brought her to lead the NH Symphony Orchestra, and now into a business helping people find relaxation and inner peace through sound baths.
Her day job as executive director of Symphony NH includes running a nonprofit that brings classical music to life with instruments including flutes, trombones and cellos. But as owner of Sound Intentions, she uses crystal bowls, gongs, drums, chimes and a flute to create sound baths to help relax her clients and relieve stress.
Hoying is a certified practitioner of sound healing and vibration therapy through the Meditate School of Mindfulness. She launched Sound Intentions in 2023 after experiencing a sound bath at a local spa. The experience was powerful, and she could not stop thinking about it. “My brain was on fire. This was a really cool experience,” she says. Hoying began researching sound baths and attended a four-day workshop for her certification.
Since then, she has been hired to provide sound bath experiences for others—primarily businesses and organizations including a recent Winter Solstice Sound bath event hosted by Ripple Effect Studio in Manchester.
Hoying comes to clients and creates a relaxing atmosphere in their space, inviting them to relax and allow the sounds of the instruments wash over them and bring them into a relaxed and often meditative state over the course of an hour. “It’s an opportunity to turn off the hamster wheel we have going all the time to have a meditative opportunity,” she says. “Different musical instruments will evoke different emotions. I tell people to feel what they feel. … You feel that rhythm and vibration in the body. It can be a reset for some people. … I don’t set anyone’s intention for it. It’s your experience.”
Music can be a powerful way to evoke emotions and memories, she says. Music has certainly been central to Hoying’s life. “People might argue I’ve been in a sound bath my whole life,” Hoying says.
Hoying grew up playing the piano and the French horn and earned her bachelor’s in music performance in French horn. She spent her career teaching music until she and her husband moved to Cincinnati at a time when school budgets had been cut, including arts and music programs. She landed a job with the Cincinnati Opera, where she spent more than 20 years helping train its younger singers. She also ran education programs for the Louisville Symphony. When her husband was recruited to work for ARMI in Manchester, Hoying reached out to Symphony NH and was recruited to write grants. In 2021 she was tapped to lead the organization, which marks its 102nd anniversary this year.
Hoying and her team have focused on programing that attract today’s audiences, including a concert last year devoted to theme songs from video games and the season’s closing show devoted to the music of John Williams, who has written some of the most iconic movie theme songs and scores. “[People] know when they come to see us it will be a fabulous experience,” Hoying says.
Hoying has been busy finding a new music director after their long-time director left for an opportunity with another symphony. “Once we figure that out, we will work with them on what the season will look like,” she says.
For more information about Sound Intentions, visit intentionsnh.com or email deanne@soundintentionsnh.com. For more information about Symphony NH, visit symphonynh.org.
To learn more about Deanna and hear a sample of a sound bath, click here.
