Brothers follow similar paths in music and medicine
Even people familiar with the adage that expertise in science and medicine often correlates with musical talent have been surprised at the booming success of the Penn Medicine Symphony Orchestra. It has become a vibrant part of campus life—and now, the wider Philadelphia medical community—in less than a decade.
Two brothers, Daniel “Dan” Zhang, MD, PhD, and MD-PhD student David Zhang, have played key roles in helping guide and shape the orchestra’s growth. Dan served as founding conductor and music director. Then, as Dan moved into residency training, David stepped up to conduct. David is the orchestra’s current music director and conductor.
The birth of an orchestra
When Dan arrived at the Perelman School of Medicine in 2015, he settled in quickly but soon realized his new life lacked something. “Music has always been a part of my life, and I missed it when I came to Penn,” he said. “My co-founder, cellist Gina Chang, and I sensed an interest in assembling an orchestra in our health care community and immediately knew we should pursue this special opportunity.”
Since 2016, the orchestra—which has presented two concerts per year, except for a hiatus early in the pandemic—has expanded dramatically, rising from approximately 30 players initially to more than 120 now. What’s more, those players include trainees, staff, and attending physicians and come from all of Penn’s health sciences schools, as well as those of Drexel University, Thomas Jefferson University, and Temple University.
“The inauguration of the orchestra was a significant step up in terms of ambition and accomplishment for the musical community that includes biomedical students and professional staff at Penn,” said faculty advisor Martin Heyworth, MD, retired chief of staff at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center. “From its inception, the repertoire included ambitious works, performed with commitment and effectiveness.”
Dan Zhang leads the way
Much of the credit for these successes rests with the orchestra’s two co-founders, Chang, who completed her MD and MPH degrees in 2020, and who still plays with the orchestra while a pediatric neurology resident at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Dan, now a second-year neurosurgery resident at Penn.
“As a violinist with experience as an orchestral player, and experience in conducting, Dan brought knowledge of serious art music to the project, as well as organizational skill, with the result that the concerts under his direction made a strong impression and have been well received,” said Heyworth, who is also a composer.
After starting violin studies in early childhood, Dan branched out into conducting while in high school, where he conducted a weekly extracurricular group of 5-10 classmates. “I videotaped every rehearsal, then reviewed the footage,” he said. “It was often uncomfortable and cringe-worthy but helped me come up with strategies for the next rehearsal and beyond.”
Despite the rigors of pursuing both MD and PhD degrees through Penn’s Medical Scientist Training program, Dan threw himself into leading the orchestra from its inception, when he was a first-year medical student, until he was almost finished with medical school. “Every orchestra rehearsal is the equivalent of a performance for the conductor, as it is the culmination of exhaustive preparation,” he said. “My preparation for rehearsals directly affected the quality of our concerts. I felt responsible to make the absolute most out of our time together.”
David Zhang steps up
The demands of clinical training eventually overwhelmed Dan’s ability to carve out regular time for musicmaking. Fortunately, David, his younger brother by five years, and also a violinist and conductor, arrived at Penn in 2020. In 2021, when the orchestra resumed rehearsals and Dan’s clinical rotations resumed after a pandemic-imposed hiatus, David was available to help lead the orchestra. The brothers shared conducting duties for two years. David has been the sole conductor and music director since Dan graduated from medical school in 2023.
The brothers’ efforts have been recognized and amplified by a new philanthropic gift from retired Penn Medicine cardiologist and orchestra advisory board member Bruce Jay Gould, MD, with the intention of endowing the orchestra for life.
“Music is not just a hobby or an interest of David and his brother, rather, it is a part of them; it is who they are,” said Gould, a PSOM graduate and avid supporter of classical music in Philadelphia. “The orchestra has been a great success—it needs funds to expand.”
Did they always plan on following such similar paths? Well, David did. “Growing up, Dan was my role model, and I wanted to do everything he did. Our parents put us in a lot of the same activities, but because we were five years apart, we always did them at different levels,” he said. “Being at Penn is the first time we’ve ever been at the same school at the same time. Working together in the orchestra has been incredible in being able to share our mutual love for music while watching each other grow into physician-scientists.”
“Music is not just a hobby or an interest of David and his brother, rather, it is a part of them; it is who they are.”
Although David has his own approach, “overall, we share a similar vision for the orchestra, with inclusivity and music making as a means for creative expression and the pursuit of wellness,” Dan said. “Above all else, David is my brother, and it is a special kind of pride having him follow me here at Penn and continue the extraordinary growth of the orchestra.”
For his part, David appreciates the many similarities he shares with Dan: both violinists, both conductors, both aspiring to have careers as physician-scientists.
Connecting music and medicine
For all the similarities between the brothers, they’ve leaned into their academic differences. As an undergraduate, Dan studied chemistry, following in the path of their parents, both chemists. His PhD work focused on the development of organoids—artificially grown masses of cells that mimic an organ’s function—which he and colleagues then used to study chimeric antigen receptor therapy (CAR T), a type of immunotherapy that uses genetically modified T cells to target and kill cancer cells.
Meanwhile, for David, computer science beckoned as an appealing adjunct to his medical interests. Now completing his PhD in computational statistical genetics, David’s research focuses on leveraging a large medical biobank and electronic health records to better understand how genetic variants in underrepresented populations affect genetic risk for disease.
Perhaps not surprisingly, both brothers see similarities between their medical training and what they do on the podium. Dan likens leading a rehearsal to performing surgery. “Performing a safe and effective surgery requires complete mastery of anatomy and thoughtful preparation for exactly what might be going wrong and how it might be addressed,” he said. “It’s the same with an orchestra: I must have complete mastery of the musical score and thoughtful preparation to anticipate all the things that might go wrong and how they might be fixed.”
Like Dan, David also sees parallels with the study and practice of medicine. “In medical school, you must learn to break down every system in the human body into its components before you can really understand how the human body works,” David said. “As a conductor, I have to understand each part in a score independently, but then I also have to figure out how each section of the orchestra affects others, similar to how one body system affects others.”
For the Zhang brothers to have devoted so much time to the orchestra, even as they have pursued their passions in medicine and science, "is awe-inspiring," said Suzanne Rose, MD, MSEd, senior vice dean for Medical Education at Penn Medicine and an early supporter of the orchestra.
“They are strong leaders, but also both display compassion, empathy, and understanding in all that they do,” said Rose, who was a violinist in the Penn Symphony Orchestra during her undergraduate years in the 1970s. “They are truly remarkable.”