The next time you listen to music at a nearby pub or Bay Area event, double check to see who is playing. You just might see one of your Stanford physicians.
At a division holiday party in 2009, pediatric surgeon Matias Bruzoni, MD, on vocals, piano and guitar and nurse practitioner Raji Koppolu on vocals played acoustic versions of popular songs. Soon after, two more pediatric surgeons joined and the band Midnight Rounds was born. Over the years, the band has expanded to include piano, guitar, bass, percussion, drums, violin and vocals. I spoke with Bruzoni to learn more.
What is the origin of the name, Midnight Rounds?
Our bass and guitar player James Wall, MD, and his family generously turn their guest house into a music studio whenever we need to practice. We all have very tight schedules due to our professional work, so once a week we practice late at night — many times going past midnight. As providers, we also make rounds every day to see our patients, so our drummer Yasser El-Sayed, MD, suggested we call ourselves Midnight Rounds.
What kind of music do you play?
Our repertoire includes oldies, country, 80’s, 90’s and more modern pop songs. We particularly enjoy creating mashups of songs, flipping back and forth between songs and adding our own twist. For instance, we like playing “Free” sung by the Zac Brown Band mashed up with “Into the Mystic” by Van Morrison and “Lodi” by Creedence Clearwater Revival mashed up with “Sloop John B” by the Beach Boys. Another favorite song (shown below) is “Dixieland Delight” by Alabama, which features Jonathan Palma, MD, playing violin.
Where do you play?
We play in many different venues including weddings, wineries, local pubs, holiday parties, pumpkin festivals and wherever we’re invited. It varies, but we average a couple of events per month. We play quarterly at the Pioneer Saloon in Woodside — we’ll be there on January 12.
We sometimes make a little money during our performances at places like Pioneer. We decided as a group to donate the proceeds to different charity organizations that benefit women and children’s health.
Is there any relation between playing in the band and medicine?
For us, the band is a perfect excuse to get together outside of regular working hours. We feel this strengthens our relationships with each other in the hospital. It’s also a healthy way to recharge our batteries, avoid burnout and thus take better care of our patients.
In addition, we’ve gotten to know a lot of people that work at Stanford — nurses, OR staff, social workers, interpreters and other docs like anesthesiologists — who come to our gigs. Our strongest crew are the NICU nurses and social workers, who follow us wherever we go. And every now and then, we bring one of our coworkers to the stage to sing with us. I think our patients definitely benefit, because teamwork is essential to patient care.
I also think performing under pressure is a great exercise since it is very similar to what we do every day here at the hospital. You get nervous even if you're doing an acoustic session in front of 10 people, since you want to sound good. When I interview residents for positions here at Stanford, I pay a lot of attention to whether they excel in athletics or music, which gives me an idea on how well they can perform under pressure.
Describe a favorite experience with the band.
There are times when we have our kids sing or play an instrument with us. And that's a very special moment. For instance, the other day we played at a pumpkin patch. People were playing games and stuff, not paying much attention to the band. But everyone went dead silent when my daughter came up to sing a Justin Bieber song. And then they started taping it. It was really magical.
What's next?
We’re thinking about writing some original songs as an experiment. But mostly we just want to build up our repertoire. We started with maybe five songs and now we have about 50 songs that we can we can play — some of them without even practicing. We usually practice two to three new songs for every new gig. Our band members have very different musical tastes, which makes it fun to blend all them together.
Photo by Victoria Bruzoni of Midnight Rounds band, from left to right James Wall; Matias Bruzoni; Raji Koppolu; Yasser El-Sayed; Garrett Vygantas, MD; Jon Palma; and Jeff Linnell
