Would you mind going into some detail about how you balanced medicine and your outside music activities?
Sure!
Broadly speaking, you have time in Medicine to do a lot outside of it, but you do have to be deliberate about it in a way that you may not be used to. For me that meant carefully scheduling practice time and gigs to fit my other obligations and ensure I had adequate time for everything.
Through med school, I got a church gig right off the bat for some extra income. I also got involved with the local university music department and would do recitals and other little things. As I got known locally, started getting hired by the symphony and other local groups for solo work. Opera itself wasn’t easy to do given the rehearsal time, but concert gigs are much less time. The only full opera role i did in training was during a long research block that timed out well. Residency in general followed a similar pattern- church gig, leading to other local gigs.
During M2 I started a medical student chorale as we had a number of singers in our classes. That was another fun outlet and we would perform a couple times a year.
They key for all was carving out the specific hours for musical activities. For me that was Wednesday evening and Sunday morning every week, Tuesday pm for one hour for chorale, and then occasional other evening rehearsals as they came up. If I had 2-3 hours of extra evening rehearsal during the week, then I’d be sure to make up that study time on the weekend, maybe get up early Saturday and get some extra hours in. You can’t just blow off the hours without paying a price, but it’s easy enough to make up the time elsewhere, at least to a point.
I could see a challenge if you’re an instrumentalist and not very advanced. It would be very difficult to put in the hours of practice necessary to really advance. Thankfully I was already pretty advanced so it was more about maintaining, and for the singing part you can only really practice for a limited time period without tiring the voice out.
Now as an attending, I found a great church gig though now I donate money rather than draw a salary from them. I arranged my schedule so I’m done around 1-2pm every day so there’s plenty of time for practice. I’ve also gotten involved in the local theater scene. And just the other day got my first sniff from the local symphony about a nice little solo gig. I’ve also found a fabulous local teacher and a local coach that I work with frequently to polish things back up and stay on top of the game. So nowadays I’m able to sing and play piano daily, do a couple nice roles in local theater, likely start doing something annually with the symphony, and probably something with the opera here too - they’ve also reached out. So all in all probably 3-5 good gigs per year which is about the max I’d like to do so I still have time to do all the other things I like to do.
For me it’s been staying sharp as a performer so I’m viable to get hired for these things. And then also arranging my schedule so I have time to do both well. It does mean I probably sacrifice some salary as I could surely work later and make more money, but I’m already passing 90th percentile working 35h a week most weeks, and that’s enough for me.
