James N. Weiss, MD

The Musician

I am a mostly self-taught musician, aside from 4 years of trumpet lessons from ages of 8-12 sacrificed to participate in sports when I entered high school. In college, I began to listen to jazz and found myself whistling improvised melodies along with the recordings. For reasons that I can’t explain, improvisation comes naturally to me, despite having a very limited understanding of music theory or the ability to read music. My guiding principle for improvisation is simple: you can’t really make a mistake, you can only fail to recover from one! The recorder was my first instrument after the trumpet, which led to teaching myself to play the flute during my internal medicine residency. It wasn’t until after I joined the UCLA faculty in 1981 and formed a jazz group with several other cardiologists and cardiovascular researchers that I expanded my musical quiver to include tenor, soprano and baritone saxophones, and most recently in 2016, the EWI (electronic wind instrument), a wind-controlled synthesizer illustrated in the photo on the right.  

We called our original jazz group the Elephant Can Dance Band after our drummer pointed out that watching a bunch of cardiologists trying to play jazz was like going to the circus to watch the elephants dance – it’s not how well the elephants dance, it’s the fact that the elephants can dance at all!  By recruiting musically-talented individuals from the Department of Medicine, we kept the cardiology band going with a rotating cast of musicians from the early 1980’s through 2020, although due to the short supply of jazz musicians, we gravitated mostly to rock and blues.  After 2000, we also changed our name to BPM (aka Beats per Minute in cardiology jargon or Better Practice More in musical jargon).  We performed at the annual UCLA Cardiology Holiday Party, other UCLA events, and fund-raising events for the American Heart Association.  Our last performance was at the Rose Parade After Party in Pasadena on New Year’s Day, 2020. 

My main jazz heroes are John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Art Pepper, Poncho Sanchez, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington.    The Song for the Day jazz recordings use mostly iRealPro accompaniments (piano, bass, drums) and various instrument voices of my EWI.  Guest musicians record their voices or instruments remotely and email them to me to incorporate into Garage Band.   

Hope you enjoy the Song for the Day!