Enjoy Northwestern Medical Orchestra’s free concert July 12

• Media must RSVP to attend the concert in person
• Orchestra has more than 100 Northwestern residents, scientists, staff
• ‘People in the medical field make brilliant, passionate and very disciplined musicians’

CHICAGO --- There’s a chance your doctor swaps their stethoscope for a saxophone. Or the nurse checking your blood pressure moonlights as a violinist. After all, music and medicine are known to share numerous parallels.

Since 2018, Northwestern University students, residents, faculty, researchers and staff have played in the Northwestern Medical Orchestra (NMO), which was founded by medical students at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The aim was to provide a musical outlet for health care professionals and to make beautiful music for the audience. Some musicians have called the orchestra their "cure for burnout."

Members of the media and public are invited to attend the NMO’s Summer Band Concert this Friday, July 12, at 7 p.m. (CT) in Thorne Auditorium (375 E. Chicago Avenue). Around 50 members of the orchestra will play pieces by Gates, Grainger, Giroux and Ticheli, as well as selections from "Wicked." The event also will be livestreamed. Media must RSVP to attend in person by emailing Kristin Samuelson at ksamuelson@northwestern.edu.  

Watch the video of the orchestra’s spring 2024 standing-room-only concert.

“We’ve had house staff tell us that participating in the orchestra has been such a positive influence on their well-being, especially as they find themselves in the most challenging and demanding part of their medical training,” said Bettina Cheung, NMO co-founder and co-president, who is also an eighth-year Medical Scientist Training Program student at Feinberg. “One bonus of doing so in a community like NMO is meeting other health care professionals in all different fields and stages of training. For example, medical students are playing side-by-side with attendings, residents, nurses and physical therapists.”

Angela Yang, fourth-year Feinberg medical student and co-president of the orchestra, said that over the years, many of their members have commented on how special NMO has been during their time at Northwestern.

“Personally, music has been a core part of my identity ever since I was young,” Yang said. “In another life, I may have pursued a career in music instead of medicine. I think where the two fields overlap is that they are both providing a service to the community. The work that we do as an orchestra touches many lives, and I can only hope it brings a sense of healing and well-being to both our performers and audience members alike.”

Jennifer Huang, NMO principal conductor and artistic director, and a graduate of Northwestern Bienen School of Music, underscored the parallels between medicine and music.

“The skills required to perform an instrument at a high level under a lot of pressure are very similar to what you would need to have in an operating room or on the floor of an emergency room, and dealing with patients,” Huang said. “And so, I find that people in the medical field make brilliant, passionate and very disciplined musicians.”

More about the orchestra:

Originally founded as a group of 50 musicians, the NMO has grown to more than 100 members who perform at least four free concerts per year with anywhere from 200 to 400 audience members at each concert.

NMO started the Summer Band Concert during the COVID-19 pandemic to comply with public health guidelines and play outdoors. When restrictions lifted, it began playing as a full symphony orchestra again but maintained the band as a summer experience to include more members of the medical community. The Summer Band Concert conductor is Dr. Todd Florin, associate professor of pediatrics at Feinberg and a physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago.

NMO shares the therapeutic benefits of music through open rehearsals and concerts at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, as well as intimate chamber music settings across campus and orchestral performances. NMO’s mission is to support diverse programming and equitable access to music, and for its members to make music together for self-care and preventing burnout.