2026 Medical Honoree

Stephan J. Quentzel, MD, JD, MA is a true integrative psychiatrist, turning to the wealth of science and the riches of tradition to attend comprehensively to the needs of spirit and brain, psychology and physiology, philosophy and instinct, inner and outer, culture and nature, personal and political, mind and body.  Trained together in Psychiatry, Family Practice and Integrative Medicine, seasoned over 35 years as a passionate clinician, enchanted nonstop by the role of healer and shaman, grounded in art is liberation, and convinced that compassion and therapeutic relationship are at the core of the finest clinical services, Dr. Quentzel practices elegant and effective mental health care with a unified view of the patient, and the world, while he insists that the goal of treatment be pursuit of optimal, in its broadest vision.  As a holistic physician and as Medical Director of The Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine, where Stephan provides clinical management of thorough bio-psycho-social-musical services geared to the health needs of musicians and performing artists uniquely, outpatient music psychotherapy clients generally, and hospitalized medical patients requiring expansive Music and Medicine support, all in New York City, relieving the most serious suffering is paramount, but so is nourishing the most productive wellness.  And it works.

 

Stephan Quentzel is Assistant Clinical Professor in Mount Sinai Health Systems.  He holds joint undergraduate degrees from M.I.T., and he graduated from The Medical Scholars Program of The University of Illinois.  He is a founding member of the International Association of Music and Medicine.  Previously, Dr. Quentzel was Medical Coordinator for Psychiatry at The Institute for Urban Family Health, Chief of Primary Care Psychiatry at Beth Israel Medical Center, holistic psychiatrist for The Continuum Center for Health and Healing, and faculty functional physician at The Blum Center for Health.  He is known to television, radio and internet audiences around the country, and he is published and referenced in a myriad of professional and lay settings.  Over close to three decades, Stephan has given in excess of 2000 public presentations and medical lectures.

 

Stephan Quentzel, MD, JD, MA has refined his clinical and personal “feel” by practicing medicine on the Hopi and Navajo reservations in the American Southwest; by exploring throughout Nicaragua and Guatemala on a health care delegation; by drawing on his enlightening audiences with The Dalai Lama and associates at their home base in Dharamsala, India; by adventuring wide-eyed across the globe and down his own city block, all awash in real lives and real stories; by sitting attentively with Mother Nature, with art, with justice, and with imperfection; by feasting on an inspiring Jewish heritage; and by rooting long and hard for another world, a different world, a shared world that is very possible.  Dr. Quentzel, with activism in his identity and his genetics, yearns, through a lens of Bread and Roses for all, for individual and collective health and meaning that transcend the typical boundaries of conventional medical care and of business as usual.

 

Stephan Quentzel considers it a remarkable privilege to be a caregiver, he believes in a humanistic practice of medicine, and he hopes that he makes a difference, and we make a difference.

 

All things are connected.

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Song lyrics requested by Honoree to be shared:

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This Land is Your Land by Woodie Guthrie

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This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway;
I saw below me that golden valley;
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding;
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.