Former opera singers share a friendship — and a radiation oncology residency
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Oncology wasn’t the first love of Matthew D. Garrett, MD.
Before taking up his career as chief resident of radiation oncology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Garrett was a full-time, world-class opera singer. Trained at the prestigious Julliard School, Garrett spent years performing in some of the most esteemed opera houses in North America, Europe and the Middle East.
“I loved singing,” Garrett told Healio. “The money was never good, but I didn’t care because I enjoyed it.”
Garrett was living his dream — until an unanticipated turn of events changed his life.
In May 2009, Garrett suffered a vocal cord hemorrhage from which his voice never fully recovered. He lost the ability to do the thing he loved at a professional level.
In the end, he found an even greater love — and a new career — all through one person.
“My girlfriend at the time, now my wife, is a hematologist/oncologist — she was a bone marrow transplanter at [Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center] for many years,” Garrett said. “So, as I was falling in love with her, I was finding cancer to be very interesting to talk about — I felt drawn toward it.”
After giving himself 2 years to recover his voice, Garrett decided to move on.
“I struggled for a long time deciding between medicine or business school. I didn’t want to do medicine, because it was going to take 11 years from start to finish,” he said. “However, I came to accept that it would make me most fulfilled. Now I’m in year number 11, and I graduate in June at the end of this amazing journey.”
‘Art is important’
Garrett’s future friend and colleague Connor J. Kinslow, MD, followed a different path from the opera to radiation oncology.
“The radiation oncologist who introduced me to this field while I was in college was a professional hockey player in Europe for a few years and got his eye knocked out with a hockey puck,” Kinslow, also a resident in the department of radiation oncology at Columbia’s Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, said in an interview with Healio. “He wears an eye patch now, and he decided to go into radiation oncology.”
Kinslow’s experience as an opera singer also differed from Garrett’s. Starting at age 7 years, Kinslow was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus and sang and acted in about 20 productions, including “Tosca” and “La Bohème,” at the opera house. His transition out of opera singing was much smoother than Garrett’s — he simply aged out of it.
“I sang until I was about 11 or 12; once your voice changes, you sort of graduate out of it,” Kinslow said. “Then I became an actor in the opera, or what we call a ‘supernumerary.’ It’s a nonsinging role on stage.”
Kinslow was involved as an adult supernumerary in several productions, many of which called for soldiers marching onstage during a parade or battle scene.
“I was a supernumerary in ‘La Bohème’ and ‘Aida,’ where they needed French or Egyptian soldiers marching across the stage during a parade scene or a victory in battle,” he said. “I also have been a soldier in ‘War and Peace.’ They had a huge production of it around 2007.”
Kinslow returned to the stage as a supernumerary during high school and after college. He said part of the draw of attending Columbia for medical school was the prospect of continuing to perform in the opera in New York City.
The university is home to the most active medical theater group in the country, the Bard Hall Players. Through the Bard Hall Players, Kinslow met other medical students with a passion for the arts, and even managed to get them some work in productions at the Met.
Kinslow and his peers performed in productions that were televised on PBS and around the world, while in medical school.
Kinslow didn’t meet Garrett there, however.
“When we were medical students, we were doing brain tumor research together in the same research group, and Matt said to me, ‘You’re in the Bard Hall Players, right? How do you have time for that with medical school being so busy?’” Kinslow said. “And I looked at him and I said, ‘Because art is important!’ I had no idea he had worked as a professional opera singer.”
‘I get to hold their hand’
Today, the two residents share a friendship and a common history, and both are happy with their career choice.
Having been dealt a “lemon” with his vocal cord damage, Garrett said he is able to empathize to a small degree with patients whose lives are instantly and irrevocably changed by a cancer diagnosis.
“I love getting to participate in people’s cancer care during this most difficult part of their lives,” he said. “I get to hold their hand, literally and figuratively, and help them through this. It’s very rewarding.”
Kinslow, who recently returned to New York, took time off from the opera after medical school while traveling for various rotations and completing a year of training in Chicago. Now, he hopes to return to the stage.
“I’ve been back for a year, and I hope to get involved again either this year or next,” he said. “I like being involved in the opera. It enriches my life.”
Although his accident sidelined him from the highest levels of professional opera singing, Garrett can still sing better than the average person.
“I use a baseball analogy, because people can understand it,” he said. “Basically, I went from the major leagues down to the minor leagues. I realized I was never going to get out of the minor leagues. I was getting older and was going to be a father. I decided to try something else.”
Lately, though, Garrett has considered a new foray into music, however, this time, he’d do it just for the joy of performing.
“Once I’m done training and have more time, I might try to sing some gigs, even for free,” he said. “They wouldn’t pay me, but it would be a lot of fun.”
Kinslow has a different relationship with music than Garrett. The son of a jazz musician who went into finance in his mid-40s, Kinslow has always been familiar with career transitions and balancing art with family and financial stability.
“Matt gave music his all and then went into medicine, but I was always good at math and science, so I was always pursuing a scientific career,” he said. “After graduating from the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus, I kept music at a very recreational, amateur level. I like participating in it because I like having art around me.”
Working alongside Garrett, it seems likely that Kinslow will continue to have art around him for the foreseeable future. Although Garrett rarely sings at work, he will occasionally play a YouTube clip of one of his performances. He also impresses his colleagues with his flawless pronunciation of foreign medical words, a vestige of his operatic education.
“Sometimes a patient’s name will come up in chart rounds, or maybe there will a machine named after a German guy,” Kinslow said. “So, he always does this impeccable pronunciation of any foreign word. We all get a kick out of it.”
These days, Garrett seems to be enjoying the start of his second distinguished career, an achievement not many people can claim.
“I’m doing great — I’ve got a wife and two healthy kids, and I’m embarking on this amazing dream career,” he said. “I truly believe I’m the luckiest guy I know.”
For more information:
Matthew Garrett, MD, and Connor J. Kinslow, MD, can be reached at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, 622 W. 168th St., New York, NY 10032. Garrett’s email: mdg7002@nyp.org. Kinslow’s email: cjk2151@cumc.columbia.edu.
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