Nonetheless, the overlap of music and medicine is broad and has been the focus of various investigations. In this article, we will briefly review some of the diverse intersections between music and medicine. These intersections include the relationships between musicians and doctors and artists and illness, music as therapy, and the neuroscience of music. We then describe a curricular innovation, The Art of Listening, that we undertook at our medical school to examine connections among music, musical performance and medicine. The program explored music as a metaphor for communication in medicine and medicine as a performance art. We argue that emphasis on the skills of listening demanded by full appreciation of music provides a novel and fertile ground for relating music to the practice of medicine and provides a point of departure for the use of music in medical education. Finally, we outline some limitations and concerns regarding the incorporation of music into the medical curriculum. Musicians and Physicians Research into the historical and current relationship between musicians and doctors includes biographical literature about composers who were also physicians, such as Alexander Borodin, 7 as well as literature documenting the relationships between physicians and composers. For example, the friendship between the renowned Viennese surgical pioneer, Theodor Billroth, and the great romantic composer, Johannes Brahms, has been well documented via their extensive correspondence. 8, 9 Literature on musicians and doctors also explores the role of musical performance as an avocation in doctors' lives, the tradition of doctor and health care worker orchestras, 10, 11 and speculations on the potential benefit of prior musical training on physician skills. 12 Thus, this literature broadly covers musical talent from the amateur to the world famous.