For whom the bells toll
For 30 years, Dr. Andrea McCrady has practiced medicine.
She spent grueling hours in medical school just to become a doctor and has devoted countless nights and weekends to seeing patients since then.
But McCrady, 53, most recently in family practice at Group Health’s Riverfront clinic, gave up her stethoscope about a week ago. She’s going back to school.
“If I don’t do this now, it’s just not going to happen,” she says.
Even before she became a doctor, McCrady played the carillon – a massive instrument made up of large bells. The only carillon in this area is at The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, where McCrady has been the carillonneur since 1990.
This fall, she will be an undergraduate at the University of Denver, studying for her bachelor’s degree in music with an emphasis on carillon performance.
Even though she has played professionally for years, she says she would have always regretted it if she hadn’t gone back to school to study music.
“I never got that serious academic training in music theory and music history,” she says.
“The whole thing gains such depth. I’ll be a better player and a better teacher.”
McCrady plans to keep her medical license current and will fill in for Group Health whenever she’s back in town. She’ll also perform at the cathedral during her breaks from school, including summer concerts and the installation of the new dean this fall.
A trip up to the carillon at St. John’s is not for the claustrophobic, the acrophobic or anybody squeamish about pigeon poop, for that matter. (She’s had some guest performers eye the elevator and have second thoughts about making the journey, she says.)
But to McCrady, the commute has become as mundane as driving to the office. First, she enters the broom-closet-sized elevator for the partial ascent. Then she climbs metal ladder upon metal ladder, winding her way up the dimly lit cathedral tower to the 49 bronze bells of the carillon.
The largest bell, “Big John,” weighs 5,000 pounds; the smallest weighs 17 pounds. The entire carillon, including the steel structure that supports it, weighs more than 20 tons.
McCrady plays the bells from a connecting room that houses the keyboard. Each wooden key and foot pedal is linked to a bell’s clapper. When the keys are pressed, only the clapper moves.
She dons black dance shoes to play the pedals and spreads her music across the keyboard. She taps the keys with a glancing blow from the side of her loosely clenched fist.
“It’s a touch instrument,” she says. “I like the direct, tactile connection. You can play delicately. … To me it’s a very sensual instrument.”
It may seem surprising for a doctor to close up shop and study an entirely new field. But those who know McCrady are not surprised.
“Everybody’s excited that she’s doing something that she’s wanted to do for a long time,” says Dr. Ross Coble, in family practice at Group Health’s Riverfront clinic. “She’s one of those amazingly creative people that has skills and interests in wildly diverse directions.”
Says Janet Satre Ahrend, organist and choirmaster at St. John’s: “She’s been a very good friend and such an integral part of music at the cathedral, we hope there’s a way to continue that, even if she takes a job someplace else.”
McCrady started playing the carillon in 1971 while at Trinity College in Connecticut, during her first stint as an undergraduate.
She got “bell fever,” she says, and went on to study the instrument in Europe for a year. She continued playing the carillon while in medical school at McGill University in Montreal and during her residency in Toronto.
She also sings in the Spokane Symphony Chorale and dances with the Spokane Folklore Society.
She has no idea what will happen at the end of her 2 1/2-year program in Denver. With her music degree, she hopes to go be able to teach carillon at a college somewhere. Or she could return to medicine.
“I don’t know where it leads,” she says. “Will I be flipping burgers and asking ‘Do you want fries with that?’ “
Her willingness to take the risk, though, has impressed Coble. He retires this week and says his plans for life after medicine are much more mundane.
“That’s why I’m so in awe of her and her adventurous spirit,” he says. “I’m probably just going to do some hobbies and travel.”