ANDRIS NELSONS, the young new conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, recently performed at the Tanglewood Gala Opening concerts. Listening to the exquisite performances, I was struck by the number of physicians and scientists in the audience. Music and medicine are twin passions, and I wondered: Do data exist that underscore a link between these seemingly disparate worlds? Why should the fields be closely linked? Might a connection explain Boston’s being a world-class city for both music and medicine?

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It turns out that the BSO tracks specific data linking music and medicine. Roughly one-fifth of the audience for winter season BSO concerts consists of MDs or PhDs. Moreover, physicians and scientists are similarly overrepresented on the board of the orchestra. The current president of the BSO, Paul Buttenwieser, is a practicing psychiatrist and an excellent pianist.

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Curiously, the converse is also true: Many more physicians have been trained musically than in the general population. According to the work of Harvard Medical School professor Alan Steere, over 70 percent of doctors have received musical training. Many physician musicians in Boston have found their home in the all-doctor Longwood Symphony Orchestra. This includes Harvard Professor Leonard Zon, the internationally recognized stem cell researcher and LSO’s principal trumpet player for 30 years. Other physicians, such as psychiatrist Richard Kogan, have found creative ways to blend their medical profession with their musical avocation. Kogan presents lectures on the mental illness of famous composers, and then performs their works.

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