TCOM graduate dazzles with a solo cello performance in front of 5,000 at ACGME
When you listen to Elizabeth White play the cello, it’s calming, relaxing and inspiring.
So, when she was invited to do a solo performance by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education for 5,000, you could probably guess, even as a professional, she was a little jittery.
“I had never played solo like that in front of that many people,” White said.
Jitters aside, it was the performance of a lifetime, as White played J.S. Bach’s Prelude
to the First Cello Suite in front of 5,000 at the recent ACGME Annual Educational
Conference in San Diego. It was part of the ACGME’s new initiative to incorporate
the arts and Humanities to bring meaning to medicine.
That’s right, medicine, and as accomplished as White is as a professional cellist,
Dr. Elizabeth White is also just as accomplished as an osteopathic physician. The
2024 graduate from UNT Health Fort Worth’s Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine is
determined to strike the right chord and bring the beauty of osteopathic medicine
and music into healing.
“I had a huge draw towards osteopathic medicine and the beauty of the connection to
the mind, body, and spirit,” White said. “Music taught me how they are all very interconnected,
and they do influence each other.”
White’s musical journey began when she was 10-years old and first picked up the cello,
no easy task, and started playing.
“I just fell in love with it,” she said.
She attended music camps in the summer and eventually found her way to Southern Methodist
University in Dallas, studying music performance while also being taught by two of
the best in the profession. White was trained by the famed Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s
principal cellist, Christopher Adkins, and Meadows School of Arts Professor of Cello,
Andres Diaz, who won first prize in the 1986 Naumburg International Cello Competition.
White, while immersed in music at the time, was still making connections to medicine.
“One of the things that I wrote about was that Itzhak Perlman (Israeli-American violist)
had polio as a child, and just seeing how health impacts our lives,” White said. “I
taught a lot in college, especially to kids, and I wanted to talk to them about everything.
When you see how our mind, body, and spirit affect who we are as musicians, I wanted
to help musicians figure that out.”
White is a member of the Cézanne String Quartet, an ensemble she formed while a student
at Southern Methodist University studying music. The Cézanne Quartet was the inaugural
winner of the Peak Fellowship in Chamber Music from 2015-2017 and the Second Place
winner of the Coltman Chamber Music Competition in 2015. They released their debut
album in 2014, “Retrospection.”
After graduating and finishing her fellowship, White was 24 and trying to decide how
to move forward. A full-blown music career or something else?
“I have always enjoyed medicine, so it was time to go back to school,” White said.
Her degree, a Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance, doesn’t quite translate into
medicine, or at least medical school, and White knew it.
She took pre-med classes at the University of Texas at Dallas, but also did part-time
teaching of the cello on the side, just in case things didn’t work out. Turns out
that wasn’t necessary.
“There was definitely that sense that I was very non-traditional, but I tried to embrace
that in my interviews,” White said. “I had such an enjoyable experience at TCOM during
my interview. There was an emphasis on group work in the interview process, and they
cultivated this environment, and what better skills to have than a chamber music background
to work more intimately with people.”
White graduated from TCOM in 2024 and is in the second year of her TCOM-affiliated
family medicine residency with HCA Medical City in Fort Worth. The invitation to play
at the ACGME convention came after a call for musical submissions was sent out by
ACGME, which White submitted and was selected for the solo performance.
She was introduced to the crowd of more than 5,000 people by the president of ACGME,
Debra F. Weinstein, MD, who herself is a pianist.
“It was really cool when the president introduced me and read my bio,” White said.
“I wrote my bio that was geared toward both music and medicine. I had never written
one like that, and it brought a tear to my eye to hear her read my bio aloud.”
After her brilliant performance, she had numerous conversations with people who spoke
about how much they enjoyed the crossover of medicine and music.
“One thing I talked about to someone at the convention is how medicine becomes our
identity, and I think that’s dangerous,” White said. “Yes, I’m a doctor, but I’m also
a cellist. I’m passionate about it, and it allows me to emotionally distance myself
from what is a very difficult profession. We see a lot of heavy stuff that the general
public doesn’t see every day. We are trained to handle that, but we also need to find
ways to disengage from that to protect ourselves.”
“When we don’t have that outlet, it promotes the inability to turn off those heavy
emotions. The arts and humanities foster creativity, and that helps us with our patients.
It forces us to go back to the drawing board frequently.”
White’s future as a primary care physician will certainly incorporate her musical
acumen, and she is also interested in TCOM’s Division of Performing Arts Fellowship
in a few years. She still plays the cello three times a week and performs at weddings,
but being a professional in two elite fields is a difficult balance.
“They are both hard,” White said. “There have been some sweaty palm moments in both. Sitting down to take an 8-hour board exam, doing your first shoulder injection, and then sitting in front of 5,000 people.
They both require a lot of soft skills and hard skills, and there are a lot of tricky
moments in both careers. I can say that I did my 10,000 hours as a cello player, but
as a physician, I still have a lot to learn about medicine.”
What White is learning more and more is how much she wants to help the needs of the
burgeoning performing arts community. There is no better place than the Dallas/Fort
Worth area to start.
“There is a cultural shift that needs to happen, and part of my goals is to influence
that shift,” White said. “We are blessed to be in DFW, where there are a lot of musicians
to treat. The status quo in music is that the old school mentality of ‘just figure
it out’ still exists. I would love to build this specific community, but also continue
my skills as a PCP as well.”
Perhaps White’s performance of Bach’s Prelude to the First Cello Suite is the prelude
itself to medicine, bringing the arts and the humanities into the profession.
Watch her performance here.