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Doctor in the HouseFrom scalpel to baton Among the band of Crimson conductors: Samuel Wong, M.D. GARY HOFHEIMERS |
Soon after being appointed assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1990, Samuel Wong '84, M.D. '88, operated on two young brothers from Haiti. Both suffered from strabismus--medical rubric for the common terms "squint," "walleye," "cross-eye," or any ocular misalignment--a condition that, if left untreated, can lead to functional blindness. A resident at the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital at the time, Wong had to measure, snip, and either shorten or reposition some of each boy's six extraocular muscles to reorient the afflicted eyeball in its socket. "The surgery is complicated," says Wong, now the music director of the Honolulu Symphony, "but not so messy. There's very little bloodshed." The procedures began at 7:30 in the morning and were successful. So was the performance of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony that Wong conducted later that night--a last- minute engagement, and his unofficial debut at his new post.
Though the emergency that required him to suddenly step in wasn't health-related--the maestro was just tardy--Wong has, ironically, also benefitted from the indisposed conductor as much as anyone in his career could. He can credit his official debut with the Philharmonic to the death of Leonard Bernstein '39,
D. Mus. '67, in October 1990. In December, Wong substituted for a week of Bernstein's subscription concerts. "It was very intimidating," he recalls. "The first program included one of Bernstein's signature pieces, Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. He even recorded it twice." Wong next conducted the orchestra during the Persian Gulf War when Israel was being bombed and Zubin Mehta traveled there to perform as an act of solidarity. Wong says that while abroad the maestro heard of his successes and on returning observed, "'Young Sam, it took a death and a war to launch your career.'"
Wong studied voice and piano as a youngster, and led choirs occasionally, but he first conducted symphonic music at his audition to become head of Harvard's Bach Society Orchestra. "I had studied orchestration and counterpoint, but nothing prepares you for that first encounter," he says. "It's like surgery. That first cut, or that first downbeat: those experiences are an incredible joy." He led the student ensemble for two years before graduating, but it didn't occur to him that forgoing medical school might improve his chances of making conducting a career. "To be frank, I didn't know what the profession was," he says. "And the way to enter it...It seemed so insurmountable."
In medical school, it was primarily due to Benjamin Zander that Wong continued conducting, often leading rehearsals or even the occasional performance of Zander's Boston Philharmonic and the New England Conservatory Youth Symphony. These unpaid commitments helped Wong make a decision: "I knew that if I followed my passions, I would go professional as a conductor if I could."
After graduation, he moved to Manhattan to pursue both medicine and music. Because of an impressive but unsuccessful audition he had with the Rochester Philharmonic, Wong's name circulated and he was appointed music director of the New York Youth Symphony--a position with a staff, an office, and three performances a year at Carnegie Hall. "Most of my colleagues in music didn't know I was a doctor," he says. "But in the hospital...well: it's hard to hide reviews in the New York Times."
Two years later, Mehta came to hear Wong rehearse Stravinsky's Rite of Spring with the Youth Symphony. Soon afterward, he asked Wong to become his assistant. Wong accepted and informed his residency that he would be leaving at the end of the summer.
The reactions to his news ranged from the celebratory to the incredulous. Chief of pediatric surgery Abraham Schlossman, an opera aficionado, stated matter-of-factly that if Zubin Mehta called, Wong had to go. But a fellow resident was less embracing: "You make a mockery of us," Wong recalls him saying. "Not only did you waste your training and take up a valuable place in Harvard Medical School, but you took one of six coveted residencies at this hospital."
In between guest engagements with symphonies from Tokyo to Auckland, Wong has been at work ("in airports and hotels") on a memoir about his short-lived dual career. Among its subjects, the common vocabulary of and approaches to surgery and conducting especially intrigue him. "In both fields, one uses an instrument of incredible power and finesse. A subtle stroke of the baton can create a hush or create earthquakes and great storms," he says. "Same with the scalpel: you can sculpt and cut and kill with that instrument." He observes also that surgery is a remarkably silent activity. "Surgeons point and talk with their eyes. They pull and they cut and they sew and they dab, but very little is said," he explains. "In conducting, of course, at best you say nothing, and everything is understood."
Wong has also begun to research the growing scientific evidence of music's medical applications. "It's a way to find logic in my life," he says. To his surprise, he has discovered a wide body of literature about the use of music in areas such as pain control, autism, and memory and intelligence enhancement. A study of one such phenomenon, dubbed the "Mozart Effect," suggests that infants who listen to classical music increase their spatial
intelligence. "Now the governor of Georgia has partnered with Sony to distribute music to every newborn in the state," Wong says. "Music has tremendous palliative powers." He speaks regularly to both medical and musical communities about his life's disparate passions. Of the burgeoning field's effect on him, he says, "I find myself becoming a healer in a bigger sense."
Wong believes that his new interest has helped him find solace. "As a Harvard son, I have to justify myself to my alma mater. Only two other contemporaries that I know of left medicine: Ethan Canin, a bestselling author; and a student who went on to sell medical supplies. So we were the three black sheep of Harvard Medical School. For all those professors who trained me, my deepest apologies. But I don't think that anything is wasted, and my interest in music and healing has allowed me to see this thing full circle. Now the M.D. after my name means music director."
~ Daniel Delgado