It was there—at Meadowmount—where Dr. Steere played with David Garvey, the pianist for Mary Violet Leontyne Price, a famous American soprano. He also performed in the same string quartet as then 15-year-old violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman.
“Itzhak Perlman was unique,” says Dr. Steere, who attended the Meadowmont school for five summers. “He had a fabulous technique, and there was a beauty in his playing. Already by age 15, he could play anything written for the violin.”
Misfortune & Opportunity
Dr. Steere continued with both his passions—music and medicine—until he reached age 28. He was in his medical residency when he began experiencing trouble with the fourth finger on his left hand. It began moving on its own, beyond his control, which is devastating for any violin player.
“At the time I developed [focal dystonia], no one understood what it was,” he says, adding that it developed slowly over time. “Much more is known about it now. It happens to about one in 200 musicians. Still, there’s very little that can be done about it. It’s often career ending.”
Unfortunately, that was the case with Dr. Steere, who hasn’t been able to play the violin since then. However, he had no intention of surrendering his musical career. Instead, he returned to playing the piano, simply picking up where he left off when he was almost a teenager.
“With the piano, you can play with your fingers flatter than with the violin, where they have to be curved,” he says, adding that Leon Fleisher, a famous American pianist and conductor, also developed the same condition. “It’s having them curved that becomes a problem.”
It didn’t take long before he began performing classical music by all the great composers, such as Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. He has performed at two meetings sponsored by the American College of Rheumatology and for students attending a summer music program in Chautauqua, N.Y., where Dr. Steere owns a vacation home. He says Marlena Malas, the chair of the voice department at the Chautauqua Institute and faculty member of the Julliard and Manhattan schools of music, invites her students to the summer program.
Now at age 71, Dr. Steere still performs. In August 2013, during the sing-out at the close of the Chautauqua summer music school season, he was the pianist for singer Julian Arsenault, a baritone, who now performs with the Dresden Opera Company in Germany. (Note: A video of the performance is available.)
