Such is the nature of jazz tuba that few prominent players are household names outside their genre. Can you name "the Art Tatum of the tuba" or a "the Clifford Brown of the tuba"? Many of these instrumental performers are part-timers. Only, don't tell Eli Newberger that jazz is his secondary field: it ranks solidly in a two-way tie with his role as physician, lecturer and consultant in pediatric matters.

To jazz fans, Newberger is perhaps best-known as co-founder and the original pianist, then tuba player, of the Massachusetts-based Black Eagle Jazz Band. Though no longer with that band, he is proud to have been involved in establishing it as one of the most significant exponents of traditional jazz extant.

His feet still firmly planted in the trad jazz firmament, Newberger is equally renowned in the medical community as a pediatrician who practices on the border of psychology and trauma.

When you see the term "Medical Arts" on a building, chances are you don't think about any one individual or one discipline. Certainly not about Eli Newberger. A top-tier jazz tuba player, lecturer, writer, expert witness, a pianist, and, well, the picture might be getting clearer: Eli Newberger gives new meaning to the term "medical arts."

New Englanders who know Dr. Eli Newberger through his clinical services respect him as an expert in family conflict. His face is as familiar as almost any other jazz musicians, but for a different reason: his (all-too-frequent) television appearances as an expert commentator on matters of family violence and child abuse. But if forced to make a choice between current careers, one wonders whether he could do so, as the two paths of medicine and music are so intertwined as to be one.

For icing on this musical montage, there's The Cupcake Philharmonic Orchestra, a chamber group that brings musical programming to school children. Performances of the group, which includes Eli's wife Carolyn on flute, are underwritten by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as part of the BSO's community commitment to education. In the group, Eli switches to piano, the BSO's Mike Roylance plays the tuba and Roylance's musician wife plays trumpet. The Cupcakes also supplement their ensemble with other musicians, including Boston Symphony players.

Although it comprises a relatively small portion of their professional lives, The Cupcake Philharmonic's occasional rendition of Tubby the Tuba represents the intersection of the Newbergers' work with children and music. These concerts deliver happy moments outside the context of their clinical work, where there is so much stress, controversy, and sadness.

Is music an escape from the controversy of family violence? Not exactly, but it represents a good jumping-off point for an interview. But first, some context.

Throughout their careers, Eli and Carolyn Newberger have collaborated on both music and medicine. The two disciplines have been such an integral part of their individual lives, and are so intertwined that it is difficult to choose one starting point.

Their joint work includes research, writing various articles both for professionals and consumers, on subjects having to do with many issues concerning families: the effects of poverty on family life; malnutrition and its impact on children and their development; the causes of malnutrition from both a social/political sense, as well as a medical/physiological sense. What they may be best-known for, over their years of clinical work, may be the issues that affect children and their families: child abuse, domestic violence, and sexual abuse, where Eli is often an expert witness.

For 28 years, Eli Newberger directed the Family Development clinic at Children's Hospital in Boston, which evaluated children in the setting of divorce or conflict, particularly when there were issues of abuse of children or women. In fact, judges would often refer children to the clinic when such allegations were involved. Eventually, his expertise became nationally recognized, which brought Dr. Eli Newberger's face and persona to many a television screen when news reports were seeking independent opinions on matters of family violence.

Still active on the consulting and lecture circuit, and spending less time as a clinician, Eli writes in their Berkshires hideaway near Tanglewood, where Carolyn does her painting and practices her flute and piccolo playing.

Although it would be tempting to conjecture otherwise, music isn't an escape from all this; to describe it so would be to diminish its importance in his life, his psyche, and his work. Escapism is not the reason why both Eli and Carolyn are so deeply ensconced in both fields. Art has been part of both of their lives since their youths, even before they met in college.

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