Media contact:  Anne DeLotto Baier or Lissette Campos, USF Health Sciences Public Affairs, (813)974-3300

Tampa, FL (April 25, 2005) -- Richard Kogan, MD, a psychiatrist and concert pianist, will share the role of personality in the creativity of legendary American composer George Gershwin and play some of Gershwin's music 6 p.m., Wednesday, May 11, at Tampa Theatre, 711 N. Franklin St. in downtown Tampa.

The free event, called Medicine and Music: the Mind and Life of George Gershwin, is sponsored by the University of South Florida Health Sciences Center and Tampa General Hospital.  For reservations, please call 813-974-4296.

"I'm fascinated by the connection between musical creativity and mental illness – music and the mind," Dr. Kogan said.

Dr. Kogan has been praised for his "exquisite, eloquent, and compelling playing" by the New York Times, and the Boston Globe wrote that "Kogan has somehow managed to excel at the world's two most demanding professions."

He has gained international renown for his groundbreaking work on the role of music in healing and on how the medical and psychiatric illnesses of the great composers influenced their creative output. Dr. Kogan is the recipient of the 2005 Artsgenesis Creative Achievement Award.

A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Dr. Kogan is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City and is affiliated with Weill-Cornell Medical College as Director of its Human Sexuality Program.

Richard Kogan began studying piano at age 6 with Nadia Reisenberg at the Juilliard School Precollege Division, and he furthered his musical education with Nadia Boulanger in France.  He is a first-prize winner of the Concert Artists Guild Award and the Chopin Competition of the Kosciuszko Foundation. He has been a frequent chamber music collaborator with cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

• For some additional info on Dr. Kogan, click on the link below:

 http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/38/8/60