A Journey in Time
Discover the Harmony of Music and Medicine
They say in youth your concerns only revolve around the present. In middle age you become preoccupied with the future of your children, finances, and your health. The last stage of life is characterized by a focus on the past. Fortunately for me, currently a busy internal medicine practitioner for UPMC in Bedford, PA, the present is still my most important focus.However, I admit to at times becoming fixated on music at certain times in my earlier life. A life where music was my predominant focus prior to starting my medical training. I was destined by the fate of my birth to pursue a career in medicine. My father was a world-famous pathologist who married my mother, a resident in pathology, after a six-week courtship. However fortunate I have been in most aspects of my life, the death of my father when I was seven was a major influence on my life path. Despite a profound interest in music, I knew that saving lives would become a preoccupation and I chose emergency medicine which I pursued for forty-seven years, some of which are described in my book, Tales of the ER: the Dawn of Emergency Medicine, which is available on this website.
My mother who was a talented pianist as well as a physician wanted to make sure I pursued my musical talents prior to embarking on a medical career. As I journey back in time I remember vividly arriving in Aspen, Colorado in the middle of June 1964. The Rocky Mountain high was present from the moment I checked into the Mountain Chalet the abode for the male music students. My Rocky Mountain high became more intense as I was placed in the fourth chair of the cello section of the student orchestra supervised by Walter Susskind, conductor of the St. Louis Symphony. David Cole was the principal cellist, the son of Orlando Cole who taught cello at Curtes for 80 years. Franklin Cohen, soon to be principal clarinet in Cleveland, was principal clarinet.
John Cerminaro, Jean Backstresser, french horn and flute principles were to become principles of their instruments with the New York Philharmonic some years later. And last but not least were the two student conductors, James Levine and Leonard Slatkin. The school was headed by Gordon Hardy, dean of the Julliard School.
My main claim to fame that summer was a photograph that graced the front page of the July issue of the Aspen Times. It was a picture of me playing cello in the student orchestra For the next twenty- five years after my five summers in Aspen I pursued a successful carrer in Emergency Medicine with directorships and academic activities in Connecticut and Pittsburgh, PA.
Yet I continued to play cello solo and choral and assorted chamber music concerts in CT often hired by my wife a competent but limited violist who played in the Hartford Symphony. Only after a divorce after twenty-seven years of marriage did I find my calling in music. Living in a penthouse in NYC with a cook and housekeeper seven days a week. I worked locum tenums in Emergency Rooms all over New England and Florida. But I pursued music with an intensity that led to thirty-five recordings and concerts in NYC and Martha's vineyards during the summer.
Recording with the best of the best musicians in NYC I achieved a reputation as one of the best amateur cellists in the world. Now, sixty years after attending Aspen Music Festival, I could finally measure up to my fellow members of the student orchestra I played in during the summer of 1964
I salute the Aspen Music festival for the teachers that he!ped me, Leopold Teraspulsky and Laszlo Varga. I give credit also to my first teacher David Soyer, my college teacher Benar Heifetz and my last teacher in medical school Mosa Havivi who was the last teaching assistant of Emanuel Feuermann, considered the greatest cellist of alI time. I was also blessed a few years later to study with Claus Adam, cellist in the Juilliard string quartet and summer lessons with Raya Garbosova and Zara Nelsova.
The seven recordings available on this website are a taste of the over thirty-five CDs that will become available in the future.
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