A pianist rises from cancer with a healing message

Elizabeth Borowsky is a classicasl pianist who has spent the past year battling an aggressive form of breat cancer.

Here’s what she tells us she learned.

In December 2024, I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer (grade 3 of 3). It was devastating enough to know that I would be going through nearly a year of treatment — and that was before I started finding out the potential long-term impact on my playing. As I learned more about the effects of harsh chemotherapy (five months of ACT), surgery, and radiation, I began to fear for my career. I had no idea what symptoms could appear or how my playing might be affected. I searched for role models — classical musicians who had faced aggressive cancer at a young age — and found very few, which made the journey feel even more isolating. People have often asked if I insured my fingers, and I’ve always told them, “I don’t just play with my fingers — I play with my whole body, mind, and heart.”

I’m a classical pianist with a solo career. I grew up in a musical household — my mother is cellist Cecylia Barczyk, and my siblings are professional musicians. Over the years, I’ve collaborated with Amit Peled, James Stern, Brian Ganz, Bob Cafaro, Chin Kim, Erick Friedman, and Teresa Kubiak, and performed worldwide with my family’s ensemble, The American Virtuosi.

During this challenging year, I turned to music as a form of reflection and healing, ultimately creating Inner Harmony — a piano and mindfulness album. While it is not strictly classical music, it is deeply rooted in my classical training and reflects this transformative journey. The album was released on October 25 on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube, and the most meaningful feedback has come from patients who’ve said it’s brought them calm and comfort. I’m now collaborating with Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center’s oncology and complementary care teams to make it available to patients — something I wish had been part of my own care from the beginning.

The music is decidedly simpler than anything I typically play or compose — I had to purposefully scale down complexity and intensity. Classical music is never background music, so this was a challenge! The pieces use subtle shifts in color, harmony, and timing to support the mindfulness words and reflections.