Meet Alan Storeygard | Jazz pianist, songwriter, and Family Doctor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Alan Storeygard and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Alan, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
I really have 2 businesses. And I think they compliment each other and hopefully both have positive social impact. I am a medical doctor ( a family physician ) and a musician ( jazz pianist, composer, arranger, songwriter, and recording artist). I have told many people that “Music is Medicine for the Soul.”
I have written and recorded 7 albums over 2 decades and created my own record label called CHURCH JAZZ, named after my first album.
I am Board Certified in Family Medicine and have practiced in Central Arkansas since 1981 and now teach Family Medicine in the Baptist Health Family Medicine Residency Program. Earlier in my medical career I also delivered babies for 13 years with my Family Medicine group and delivered somewhere around 1000 babies and continued to follow and treat many of them and their families for decades.
My albums are widely varied containing Jazz, Classical, Christian, Contemporary, and vocal music- some solo, some with a trio, some with full orchestration – some original, some arrangements.
In my new project with Mary Dawood Catlin I wrote an original song and a jazz piano arrangement based on a beautiful short piece composed by a friend of mine Alexander Kato Willis. I looked for a couple of years for an excellent singer and found the PERFECT SINGER for my song in Mary who is also a brilliant pianist. The name of my new song and our project is:
WHO MADE YOU?…… and WHO MADE ME?
I was AMAZED to hear that at the time she received my song to start practicing it she was in the last month of her FIRST PREGNANCY- and was singing my song to her UNBORN baby (see the title above). She and her husband Todd then had their first child a few weeks later- AND THEN she continued singing it to their NEWBORN healthy daughter Mary Elizabeth. 3 months later she felt she was ready to record it. She recorded it and it is beautiful- complimenting my jazz piano arrangement for it perfectly. We will be releasing this as a SINGLE this year and entering it in the Grammy Competition ( Mary is a voting member).
I am dedicating this to her newborn daughter Mary Elizabeth and anyone who seeks to answer the question in the title.
What is the social impact for all of this? Hard to say. But I hope I have helped many people over the years with my medical practice and my music and by sprinkling in some of my faith in all aspects of my life. I have been very fortunate to have a wonderful wife Paula , two great kids Thomas and Allison and a grandson Zander to share all of this with too.
This was a long answer to your question – but there are even more COINCIDENCES(?) in the collaboration with Mary and Todd and I with this song that we can maybe talk over in an interview. I think this song was written FOR Mary, Todd, and Mary Elizabeth before she was ever conceived – and that the 2-3 years of waiting for just the PERFECT SINGER for my song were meant to be.
Alan Storeygard

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I have touched on some of this in previous questions. Medicine and Music seem to be so intertwined in my life that when I talk about one I also end up talking about the other.
At least for me both medicine and music take similar things:
curiosity, a willingness and and an interest in being a problem solver, and an interest in continuing to be a lifelong learner and a teacher at times.

Family Medicine in particular requires an interest in social interaction with patients ( sometimes life long), a willingness to be involved in all sorts of undifferentiated medical problems, and the creativity to deal with them and involve others in their care if needed.

Jazz piano in particular also needs an interest in social interaction with other musicians, creating new ideas yourself and working with other people’s ideas.

In both music and medicine there is no “right way.” You have to work to find the “best way”everyday and with everyone.

Why Jazz for me? I really like the FREEDOM jazz encourages. I can play classical music ( other people’s previously written down ideas) and I highly respect those who can play classical music expertly.. But I get the greatest satisfaction of using someone else’s ideas or style as a starting point to develop new ideas myself and create my own style.
The jazz musicians who have influenced me and my style the most are Ramsey Lewis, Dave Brubeck, Oscar Peterson, and Vince Guaraldi. Of those great musicians who all have their own style my FAVORITE is Ramsey Lewis. I have met him a number of times and he has called me after hearing some of my albums. After my 3rd album THIRD TIME’S A CHARM ( which had a number of arrangements in his style) he called me, told me he really liked it, and had some suggestions about further albums. On that phone call he said:
“The Third Time WAS THE CHARM!” Those words were like winning a personal Grammy to me and continue to inspire me. He unfortunately died at age 87 a couple of years ago, still performing, after more than 60 albums and 3 Grammys.
With jazz I continue to learn new things with every musician I collaborate with and every idea I get for a new arrangement or a new original song.

With the new song and collaboration with Mary Dawood Catlin
( WHO MADE YOU?….and WHO MADE ME?) I have worked with many wonderful people and was inspired to created this new song by a short beautiful piece my friend Alexander Kato Willis wrote that he called THE TWO TREES.
You never know where inspiration will come from or who else you might meet along the way – including YOU and filling out this questionnaire.
Thank you for asking.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Interesting question
I grew up in a beautiful state, Minnesota, but after my residency at Duke in North Carolina my wife Paula and I ( who I met there) moved back to her home state Arkansas- which is a very beautiful state too.
The nickname of Arkansas is: THE NATURAL STATE.

When a visitor comes here we live on a farm which is fun in itself- we have 3 stocked ponds and a fair amount of land. There is also a family homestead about an hour and a half away where Paula’s mother grew up. We own some of it now and we go 4-wheeling up there, fish on a beautiful creek, and we have renovated a 1908 wooden caboose into a tiny house on that creek that can sleep 5 and has city water and electricity.
But there are other places we try to take visitors if we have time: The Ozark Folk Center, the amazing Blanchard Springs Caverns ( one of best in the country and probably the world), and maybe if we have time go trout fishing on the World-class trout streams – the White and Red Rivers. We’re also only 15 miles from Little Rock and there is always something to do there.
So much to do – visitors just need to come back.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
MY PARENTS – Norm & Sue Storeygard for
1)giving me everything I needed to succeed in school and become a family doctor graduating from Mayo Medical School in 1977
2)instilling in me a love of music and the opportunity to have piano lessons long enough that I could go any direction I wanted to in music.
3)raising me also in the Lutheran church which became instrumental in performing in church and creating my first album CHURCH JAZZ- which was a winner in the IBLA Grand Prize International Piano & Voice Competition in 2002- which resulted in my first of 4 invitations to perform in Carnegie Hall.
Interestingly the first piece I was ever invited to play in Carnegie Hall was my jazz arrangement of AMAZING GRACE – track # 1 on CHURCH JAZZ in the New York IBLA AWARDS CONCERT in 2003.
Music can lead you to wonderful places and it eventually it led to me collaborating with MARY DAWOOD CATLIN now.

The IBLA Grand Prize International Music Competition- created and directed by Dr. Salvatore Moltisanti.
Becoming a winner in that competition opened many doors musically for me and has inspired me to create more music and albums, meet more people, and led to me becoming a member ( General & Voting ) of The Recording Academy ( the Grammys). This led me to meeting Mary 7 years ago and collaborating with her now.

Mayo Medical School and Duke University. The overriding principles of both of these institutions is to treat the patient and their families as you would want to be treated yourself – and then giving you the medical education to be effective doing that.

First United Methodist Church of Jacksonville, Arkansas. Joined this church with my family after moving to Arkansas in 1981. When I first talked to the music director there about possibly playing some jazz church arrangements of mine she could have said, “No,” but she said, ”Yes.” With that “Yes” I created enough of them over the next 5 years to create my first album CHURCH JAZZ which has led to so many more things. And I continue to play 3-4 times a year in this church which is still my family’s church 3 decades later.

Live is truly a journey- and I am very lucky to have had very good help, family and friends on on my journey.

Website: https://www.storeygardmusic.com

Facebook: Alan Storeygard

Other: https://soundcloud.com/alan-storeygard/sets/favorites-the-music-of-john-barry

Favorites: The Music of John Barry

These 2 above links are to my new and 7th album FAVORITES The Music of John Barry

They take you to the album but the second one takes you right into my website where there are photos, reviews, links to videos on YouTube, reviews, and a store

Image Credits
Todd Catlin – for the image cover for WHO MADE YOU?….and WHO MADE ME?

Warren McCullough- for the image of my headshot photo