“At this time last year, this orchestra was a three-person group chat,” announced Adrian Rogers, conductor of the Music & Medicine Orchestra. It was May 2025 at St. Bartholomew’s Church, and Rogers was speaking to an audience of over 500 people. Behind his podium was a full-sized orchestra of nearly eighty musicians.

In a triumphant full-circle moment, the orchestra was poised to play Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2. This same symphony was one of the last pieces the orchestra played before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. 

Prior to the pandemic, the Music & Medicine Orchestra was a staple of the Tri-I community, performing two concerts per year at St. Bartholomew’s Church in the Upper East Side. However, once the orchestra was put on pause in 2020, momentum was lost, old members moved away, and the group became dormant for the next five years.

Until last summer, when Annie Wu (M2 at Weill Cornell) heard that her friend Adrian Rogers was moving to New York City to study conducting as a Master’s student at Juilliard. Together with Molly Monge (Tri-I M.D.-Ph.D. student), Wu, Monge, and Rogers restarted the orchestra from the ground up, putting impressive hours into recruiting musicians, securing funding, scheduling rehearsals, preparing repertoire, and all the details in between.

Within weeks, they had progressed from a three-person group chat to a full-sized orchestra. The newly revamped Music & Medicine Orchestra came together to rehearse every day for just one week before performing their first concert in five years.

In the first year since its revival, the orchestra has delivered four full-length concerts featuring iconic symphonies, with musicians from the Tri-I performing as soloists. The second concert, in August 2024, featured a clarinet concerto performed by Marton Simon (Rockefeller postdoc). Four months later, the third concert featured Dvir Avnon-Klein (Rockefeller Ph.D. student) on violin and Annie Wu on viola, performing Mozart.

In May 2025, the Music & Medicine Orchestra was finally able to return to its pre-pandemic home at St. Bartholomew’s Church, the largest church in the Upper East Side. With approximately 500 audience members in attendance, the orchestra played a unique program that included two contemporary pieces, a Haydn Cello Concerto performed by Giacomo Glotzer (Rockefeller Ph.D. student) and Symphony No. 2 by Jean Sibelius, cementing a successful revival season. This program was especially meaningful, as Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 was one of the last pieces performed before the orchestra’s five-year hiatus.

“The last piece I performed with the Music and Medicine orchestra while I was a medicine resident before SARS-COV2 threw the orchestra, Weill Cornell, and the world into chaos was the Sibelius Symphony No. 2,” says Chou Chou, a violinist and Pulmonary & Critical Care attending at Weill Cornell Medicine who played with the orchestra before its hiatus. “Without the orchestra, I, like many others, hung up my instrument. Now, exactly five years later, the orchestra comes roaring back. Triumphantly, with another performance of Sibelius Symphony No. 2. Now, as a practicing intensivist, the orchestra feels more important than ever as a creative outlet in a world of chaos.”

Indeed, in the past year, the Music & Medicine Orchestra has provided a key creative outlet for dozens of musicians across the Tri-I, as well as a crucial way to connect with others across different institutions. “Despite the lack of departments at Rockefeller, we are often siloed into groups based on our cohort, lab, or scientific discipline, and interaction with the rest of the Tri-I is limited,” explains Charlotte Bell, who has played cello with the orchestra since the very first concert. “The Music & Medicine Orchestra has become an incredible opportunity to form connections over a shared passion for music, transcending differences in career stage, interest, and institute.” Moreover, while the orchestra mainly consists of (and prioritizes) those from Tri-I institutions, it is not limited to just the Tri-I; several musicians hail from other biomedical institutions across New York City, including Mount Sinai and Columbia Medical School.

The orchestra has also allowed musicians to reconnect with music after many years away from their instrument. “After losing touch with the violin for over ten years, I was very excited to have an opportunity to play in an orchestra again with the talented students, researchers, and physicians here,” says Sherry Fan, a Tri-I M.D.-Ph.D. student. “Playing in the orchestra challenges me every concert cycle and rejuvenates me after a long day in the lab.”

With a resounding first season under its belt, the Music & Medicine Orchestra is now looking forward to its second season, starting with a summer concert series featuring two separate concerts in July and August. We hope to see you at our upcoming August concert, featuring works by Haydn, Tchaikovsky, and Dvořák.

Sidebar:

If you are a musician in the Tri-I who is interested in joining the orchestra or staying in the loop with Music & Medicine events, please reach out to any of the contacts below. In addition to the orchestra, the Music & Medicine Initiative also organizes small group/chamber ensembles and opportunities to perform for hospital patients. 

Orchestra Manager: Zachary Zaroogian (zjz4001@med.cornell.edu)

Hospital Performances: Heather Berman (heb4004@med.cornell.edu)

Small Group Ensembles: Yixuan Zhao (yzhao02@rockefeller.edu)

All photos provided by Yixuan Zhao