“I feel that music runs through my body as blood runs through my arteries,” says Calvin Lee, a Modesto, California, surgeon and acupuncturist. “But I don’t get much opportunity to play music. After being away from being able to express music, I feel off-centered.”

This spring, Lee landed a spot in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, winning an online audition and performing at Carnegie Hall with an ensemble of other enthusiasts under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas. “I was in my surgery room in our office between minor procedures when I got the call,” he says. “Google/YouTube initially called my office phone, and our receptionist at first thought it was a prank call that I had won a competition to go play violin at Carnegie Hall.”

Before entering medical school, Lee had taken his violin playing seriously. “I had been concertmaster at the Brown University Orchestra and had won the concerto competition,” he says. He later secured a position in the first violin section of the Illinois Symphony, but had to pass on the job to complete his medical studies. “It would have been a dream for me to play in that orchestra at that time,” he says.

His brief stint with the YTSO has opened doors for Lee. He was featured on the ABC World News, NPR, and other news outlets. Folks took notice. “My audition [of the Presto from Bach’s Violin Sonata in G minor] caught the attention of two medical orchestras in Asia, one from Hong Kong and another from Taiwan,” he says. “They invited me to solo in a concerto with them this summer. I hope that people will be able to see me as a musician and as a physician. I’ve always believed that one is able to bring the most to any field when one is an expert in more than one area. There will be creative ways of intermingling the seemingly unrelated fields. I’ve found ways to break down difficult surgical maneuvers into manageable basic motions, very much like practicing a hard passage on the violin.” —Greg Cahill