“I decided really young that I wanted to go into medicine. I have hemophilia, which means my blood doesn’t clot normally, and at age seven, I learned to do my own IV infusions. That early exposure to the medical field showed me how much of an impact medicine can make in people’s lives. From then on, becoming a doctor was really the only career I was interested in.

I started medical school at the U in 2021, and I have loved it. I grew up in Murray, Utah, moved to Morgantown, West Virginia, then came back to Utah for undergrad at BYU, where I majored in viola performance. This June, we’re moving to Vermont for my psychiatry residency.

Music has always been a big part of my life. The great thing about medical school is you can major in anything, as long as you do the prerequisites —so I appreciated being able to major in viola.

I have three siblings and my mom started us all on our instruments when we were, four or five. We make up a string quartet. My mom picked the viola for me, and though at first I fought practicing, I learned to love it.

My degree in music led me to Madeleine—my wife. We met at BYU in our music classes. We started studying together for our medieval music history class and that’s when we started dating. She finished her master’s in piano performance while I finished my undergrad.

From the start, we played music together—a lot of classical pieces, hymns in church. The album we just finished, Like a Child at Home, was something we started working on when we were dating. Madeleine did most of the arranging, and it became a project we returned to off and on, through school, marriage and even becoming parents. It wasn’t always easy to carve out time for the album. Between med school, having a newborn—we had to be intentional. When the baby was asleep, instead of watching TV, we’d work on the album. It gave us something to talk about and work toward together. It’s a little musical journal of our life these past six years. It’s real and heartfelt.

We performed a lot during those years—not just for the album, but at nursing homes, fundraisers for refugees, church services and even the white coat ceremony at med school.

One of my favorite experiences was playing with the Utah Medical Orchestra. I helped coordinate outreach performances, including a concert at the Huntsman Mental Health Institute where we paired music with discussions about composers’ mental health histories.

I also frequently performed in the unofficial “School of Medicine String Quartet” with classmates who were professional musicians before medical school.

My mentor in psychiatry—Dr. Paul Carlson—also plays in the orchestra. That’s how we connected. I wasn’t originally interested in psychiatry, but we sat together at a specialty lunch, started talking and he became a mentor to me. He even inspired the mental health concert.

Every year, I have played in a quartet with other Utah Medical Orchestra members at the Utah Symphony Healthcare Night event at Abravanel Hall.

To end my time at the U, I performed the Concerto for Viola by Gyula Dávid with the Utah Medical Orchestra accompanying me at Libby Gardner Hall. The Dávid Concerto is unique and fun to play because of its Hungarian folk influences. Since I started my degree in viola over ten years ago, I have dreamed of performing a concerto with an orchestra. When I started medical school I thought I would be putting my viola away for four years, but at the U I found many amazing opportunities to grow both as a musician and as a physician.”

—Hunter Montgomery, Class of 2025, Doctor of Medicine, University of Utah School of Medicine, from Murray, Utah