Bearer of Music

In his notes for this release in an essay entitled Music, Medicine and Elaine Bearer, Steven Ledbetter writes: "Elaine Bearer is a remarkable contemporary example of a composer who has also actively followed the very different career of a medical researcher. Already, at a very early age, she was called upon to choose between two passions, and although one or the other seemed to win out temporarily, both have been continuing realms of activity in a busy life. Music first seemed to have the upper hand. She began composing at the age of six. Music continued to enthrall her during her secondary school years and she attended Carnegie Mellon University as a music major, studying composition with Carlos Surinach and Virgil Thomson. In 1967 she went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger and upon returning, completed her bachelor's degree at the Manhattan School of Music, where her teachers included Mario Davidovsky. During these years, she also freelanced on the French horn, playing in the American Symphony Orchestra under Stokowski, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the Orchestre de Paris, under Charles Munch. She received her master's degree in musicology from New York University and began work on her doctorate there. Music would seem to have won out. In 1973, she moved to San Francisco and began teaching music and composing. The composing never stopped, but before long she discovered that teaching solfeggio and dictation to freshman was detrimental to her inner ear and turned to biology, the other subject that had always interested her. Following two years at Stanford to get the medical school prerequisites she had bypassed earlier, she proceeded to the University of California, San Francisco, where she earned an M.D. and a Ph.D., completing both degrees in record time. Then followed a year in Geneva, Switzerland where she joined Lelio Orci's Laboratory at the University of Geneva. Upon returning to San Francisco she did a residency in the Department of Pathology while at the same time, was Composer-in-Residence to the university's symphony Orchestra. In 1991, she moved to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where she holds two appointments, as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music as Assistant Professor of Medical Science, continuing her active life combining music and medicine." These facts alone should make you want to experience this disc. The music is accessible and appealing.