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As published in UConn Health Center Magazine, Winter 2006.

A Circuitous Route

As a folksinger and former troubadour, Hugh Blumenfeld, M.D. ‘07, often used music to help the sick and disabled. As a third-year medical student, he continues to bring music into his training to become a healer.

A New York native, Blumenfeld, 47, grew up in New Jersey surrounded by a family full of doctors and dentists. He often “thought about pre-med” while earning undergraduate degrees in biology and writing at MIT. However, he wound up with a Ph.D. in English from New York University, and teaching in New York and Connecticut.

He also honed his singing and songwriting skills, becoming a full-time performer in 1994, touring the U.S. and Europe, recording CDs, and writing about folk music.

The Connecticut Commission on the Arts selected Blumenfeld as a “master teaching artist” in 1995 and made him state troubadour for 1999-2000.

Over the years, he made “more and more music for people who were ill,” including children at the American Cancer Society’s Camp Rising Sun near Colebrook, Conn. “My first day on the traumatic injury ward of Hartford Hospital, I saw a man who’d had a stroke,” Blumenfeld recalls. “He couldn’t even open his eyes, but as I was singing, his tears starting coming.” Such experiences led the musician to reconsider becoming a physician.

“I was looking for something to continue the kind of intimate relationship you have doing music with people,” he says. “It was also becoming a father, retiring from the road, 9/11 and the desire to bring together art, science – everything I’d done so far – into one pursuit that would redeem, or justify, or complete the journey so far.”

Blumenfeld thought he might be too old or his “background too bizarre” to get into UConn’s medical school. In fact, he’s just the kind of student the school seeks.

“We have a long history of taking people with diverse backgrounds who take a circuitous route to medical school and have a wealth of gifts outside medical science,” says Anthony Ardolino, M.D., associate dean for medical student affairs. “Hugh brings an amazing array of qualities. He is so mature and gentle in his manner, and it’s not just because he’s a father [of two] or the oldest member of his class; he just has an inner peace and serenity he brings to everything.”

Blumenfeld enjoys the program’s emphasis on clinical training and is attracted to primary care medicine. He has worked at several student-run free medical clinics and performed at benefits to raise money for them. Music will continue to play a role in his medical life, “whether it’s singing to toddlers while I examine them or connecting with Alzheimer’s patients,” says Blumenfeld.

“He’s going to make a wonderful physician,” adds Ardolino, “but he’s also enhancing his medical school class by just being here.”