Jacob (Jack) Langer, a renowned pediatric surgeon, was on sabbatical two years ago when he reached into his memory drawer and rescued songs he wrote 35 years ago.
In San Francisco for a six-month break, Langer, who had once considered becoming a professional musician, had free time, a luxury he hadn’t enjoyed for decades. He reworked some of the songs and ended up recording them on his debut CD, Return.
Langer, who was 12 when he got his first guitar, turned 60 in late September, during the week of the CD’s release at Hugh’s Room in Toronto.
“A lot of people, when they get into this age group, they have trouble, they have midlife crises. For me, this process of making the CD has been an antidote to that kind of anxiety,” he said
Initially, the plan for the CD was to record Langer singing, accompanied by himself and another guitarist, but the project snowballed to include several instrumentalists and backup singers. The CD features songs about romantic love, its highs and lows, penned during Langer’s teens and early 20s, as well as new material.
Someday, written for his wife, Ferne Sherkin-Langer, on their 25th wedding anniversary about 14 years ago, celebrates mature love.
Langer focuses on a different kind of love in Song for Ben, a gem in which he writes about sitting in the Toronto General Hospital watching his beloved grandfather while he lay dying.
Langer hadn’t intended to take such a long break from his music, which he pursued through high school, university and medical school, performing at open mikes in Toronto clubs, among them the legendary Riverboat in Yorkville and Egerton’s.
A folkie, his musical heroes included Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Bruce Cockburn and John Martyn. After Langer made the decision to specialize in pediatric surgery, he put aside his guitar, playing it occasionally for personal enjoyment and at sing-alongs during campfires.
“I didn’t count on how overwhelmingly busy it would be to be a surgical resident, and once I became a pediatric surgeon, I was doing research, I was teaching. It was an all-encompassing job,” he said, adding that he doesn’t regret his decision.
“Being a pediatric surgeon is just an amazing career and I have done a lot of good for people, so it’s been hugely satisfying.”
Langer was the chief of pediatric surgery at the Hospital for Sick Children until 2012. He made the news in 2005 when he separated conjoined twins from Zimbabwe, Tinashe and Tinotenda Mufuka.
Toronto Life named Langer one of the city’s 30 best doctors in 2014. He’s currently a surgeon on staff at SickKids and not working as intensely as he once did. So he had time in the past year and a half to record his CD.
Initially, Langer contacted Joe Freedman, a guitarist he’d played with in high school, for help with the recording. “He encouraged me to get a professional producer because he felt the songs were good enough that they deserved that,” Langer said.
Freedman introduced him to guitarist Kevin Barrett, who became the CD’s producer, and the project gathered steam from there. Fourteen musicians and singers are on the recording. Among them are Langer’s son Ben, 30, on banjo and harmonica; his second son, Alexander, 23, on tambourine; his daughter, Jessica, 34, and his wife, Ferne, both on backup vocals.
Most of the people involved in the project were together for the first time on the stage at Hugh’s Room, where they sang and played their hearts out.
Now that Langer has reconnected to his music, he says it will remain part of his life. He intends to rework more of the old songs from his memory drawer and write some new ones and he hopes to release another CD.
“It has been such a fun journey that I can’t imagine stopping,” he said.
For more information and to purchase Langer’s CD, visit www.jacoblangermusic.com. You can listen to the CD on Spotify.
