Jochen Blum (born January 22, 1959 in Ludwigshafen) is a German specialist in surgery and trauma surgery, professor of music physiology, and author of specialist books.
He is a co-founder and long-standing board member of the German Society for Music Physiology and Musicians’ Medicine (DGFMM).
Excerpt from an interview:
Back then, a violin maker and now chief physician for trauma surgery, orthopedics, and hand surgery, what motivated you to become a doctor—the decision to ultimately pursue a career in medicine?
It’s been around for a while; it was already an idea when I was at school. They’re two parallel worlds. I also studied instrument making during my school years.
I trained with Stelio Rossi in Siena; this is what his instruments sound like:
Towards the end of this time, I also considered possibly going into music therapy, because I was an avid musician. However, I was already aware that working at a professional level, as a professional musician, was something I had a different view of. I didn’t necessarily want to eke out a life in the back row of a small orchestra, and I didn’t really have the skills to pursue a major solo career.
In addition to classical music, I did indeed play rock and jazz in bands, but that was simply for the joy of playing rather than the idea of making it a career. But I knew that after finishing school and graduating from high school, I didn’t want to immediately continue on to university the next day, so to speak, but rather wanted to deepen my knowledge of this practical area, and I had the opportunity to learn the craft of violin making from a luthier in Italy.
Although it was already clear to me back then that I wanted to go on to university again, and that’s exactly what happened. During my time as a violin maker, I had a few customers – in this case, they weren’t patients, but customers who wanted things changed – and I asked myself whether it wasn’t more of a medical problem that was bothering them. But of course it was all a bit vague, so I’d say the roots of both were there early on, but ultimately it developed in such a way that after completing my violin making training, I definitely wanted to study medicine, and I was then able to combine the two areas a bit later on.
https://www.medpertise.de/musikerkrankheiten-krankheitsbilder-prof-blum