ABOUT THE ARTIST

The Doctor Is In!

Barry Roseman to take a break from Surgery for some Friday night jazz

By Steve Wildsmith (stevew@thedailytimes.com)

August 19th, 2012

By day, he’s a respected local cancer surgeon. By night, he’s a jazz-playing violinist. And rarely do the two lives meet.

“A lot of my patients are surprised when they find out, and a lot of the people I play jazz with are surprised when they learn I’m a doctor,” Roseman told The Daily Times this week.

“It’s an interesting dynamic. I feel lucky that I have a job - I call it my ‘day gig’ sometimes - that allows me to do both of these things.

“I have the best of both worlds. I don’t have the pressure of having to make a living doing this music, and considering that it doesn’t pay much of anything to perform jazz, that’s a good thing.”

What it lacks in monetary reward, however, it more than makes up for artistically and spiritually. In fact, given his background, it’s hard to imagine Roseman going through life without music as a part of it in some form or fashion.

Raised in Los Angeles during the 1960s, he was given a violin by his father when he was 7. Although the pop culture revolution was in full swing, and rock ‘n’ roll was breaking new ground on the West Coast, Roseman discovered his proficiency on the instrument and found there were plenty of opportunities to put it to good use in school orchestras and church ensembles.

“By the sixth grade, I was already playing pop music and improvised music on the violin, trying to blend contemporary music with the instrument I was familiar with,” Roseman said. “I also took up the guitar and played that because it’s a more accessible instrument when you want to play rock ‘n’ roll and pop music.”

Seeking a teacher to help him master the six-string, he found one in Ted Greene - a renowned jazz guitarist and educator who opened Roseman’s ears to a new style of music. Roseman fell in love and decided that jazz was the genre he wanted to master.

While the technical prowess required to perform jazz reminded him of classical music, he discovered the free-form of expression inherent to jazz that sealed the deal, he said.

“It combines the musicianship of classical music with the art of creating melodies and being spontaneous,” he said. “The instrumentalist in jazz is a composer and a performer at the same time. It’s different than in classical music, where the composer and the performer are different people. With jazz, you’re creating melodic and rhythmic ideas on the spur of the moment, but you’re also the person expressing them.”

He followed that dream to the University of California at Berkeley, but when he discovered the school had no jazz program at the time, he left to pursue his education in the jazz clubs of San Francisco. He studied with renowned pianist Art Lande. Eventually he moved to New York

In New York, he supported himself by playing music for more than a year, until it dawned on him that the “starving artist” lifestyle wasn’t one to which he was willing to become accustomed. "I had a vision of being a jazz musician, and when I got to New York City, the job just wasn’t what I thought it was going to be,” he said. “So, I switched gears. I went back to school at U.C.Berkeley, and I thought about what career I might choose where I could use my intelligence and personal skills, and yet still have an individual voice and do something productive and helpful. And the natural conclusion was medicine.”

After Pre-Med, Medical School, Surgery Residency in San Francisco and a fellowship at MD Anderson in Cancer Surgery, Roseman and his family moved to Maryville 19 years ago. He had continued to play the violin sporadically, but after a decade of medical practice in Knoxville TN, the urge to play it grew stronger than ever.

“I had dreams of playing music,” he said. “Little by little, I made more and more time for myself to practice, and I regained the confidence that I could regain the technique back to play at the level I’d been at before I went into medicine.”

With the help and camaraderie of the local Knoxville jazz scene, Roseman fine-tuned his skills. He met and studied with Jazz Master Jerry Coker, and was soon getting gigs around town. He quickly became a respected member of the Knoxville jazz community. Friday night, he’ll showcase his talent with a performance at the Clayton Center for the Arts on the Maryville College campus.

“I’ll be integrating styles I grew up with, including pop tunes, but I’m really into the jazz stuff,” he said. “That way, the audience can relate to the melodies. That’s a way to bridge that intimidation some people have of jazz with the complexity of the music. I’m always aware when I’m playing of who my audience is, and whether anyone is listening - other than musicians.”