About 150 students, faculty, staff and guests from area hospitals enjoyed a free lunch from medicine Dean Edward Halperin and a concert by music faculty at noon Monday, Jan. 24.
Halperin greeted the audience in the Kornhauser Library Auditorium to the first Music & Medicine concert at the HSC.
Everyone should get off the treadmill for an hour, he said.
Music can mean different things but listening to beautiful music is reason enough for the break in daily routine, Halperin noted.
While students were appreciative for the free lunch, the music was the main draw.
A free lunch always helps with tight budgets, said second-year medical student Mike Zhang, adding quickly that he was there for the music, a love he has from his childhood days in California studying the piano.
Student Diana Neamtu said that she would have come even if lunch had not been provided because she liked the touch of humanities that the program brought to the Health Sciences Center.
Music faculty Bruce Heim, French horn, and Dror Biran, piano, performed Reflections for Horn and Piano, an intense combination for the two instruments by Paul Basler after Halperin requested that audience members remove all sandwiches from their noisy wrappers and that on-call doctors move to the end of their rows, .
During the program, music Dean Chris Doane greeted the audience with an invitation to visit the School of Music, which he called the best kept secret for music in Louisville, with almost 200 concerts a year.
Biran also performed a challenging polonaise by Chopin. A post-performance Q&A session included a venue-appropriate question about Chopin’s tuberculosis.
Medicine faculty member Baby Jose said that he didn’t remember another event like this in his 32 years at UofL.
It is just so relaxing – an hour without words, said student Amanda Wood.
A second Music & Medicine is not scheduled but Halperin said that the deans would evaluate the program and interests for an encore event.