Longwood Symphony and World Doctors Orchestra at Symphony Hall
Dr. Stefan Willich, WDO Founder and Conductor
Dr. Jeremy Faust, Guest Conductor
Lindsay Kesselman, Soprano
BACH Arr. Schoenberg
Prelude and Fugue in E flat major, BWV 552
MAHLER
Adagio from Symphony No. 10
BARBER
Knoxville: Summer of 1915
Lindsay Kesselman, soprano
STRAVINSKY
Firebird Suite, 1919
Benefiting Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program
About World Doctors Orchestra
The World Doctors Orchestra was founded in 2008 and combines the pleasure of fine music with global medical responsibility. Three to four times a year, some 100 physicians from all over the world exchange their white coats for evening attire and perform a benefit concert for medical aid projects. While our daily work focuses on healing one patient at a time, as an orchestra we promote the conviction that neither national borders nor political or economic interests should limit access to basic healthcare.
We invite medical doctors to share our vision by participating in the sessions. The rehearsals include coaching by professional musicians, proficiency in classical instrument and orchestra experience are required. The World Doctors Orchestra is an independent non-profit organization driven by the spirit and dedication of the players.
Founder and conductor of the World Doctors Orchestra is Stefan Willich, Professor at the Charité – Berlin University of Medicine and former President of the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin.
About the Beneficiary: Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program
The mission of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP) is to ensure unconditionally equitable and dignified access to the highest quality health care for all individuals and families experiencing homelessness in our community. As a nationally recognized model of innovative health care, BHCHP provides medical, dental, behavioral health and supportive services, delivering care to over 10,000 patients in 30+ shelter and hospital-based clinics across greater Boston through the work of multidisciplinary health care teams. Our teams of doctors, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, psychiatrists, case managers and social workers, engage with patients wherever they are: in shelters, along back alleys, under bridges, and countless other unconventional locations. Learn more at bhchp.org.
About the Conductors
Prof. Dr. Stefan Willich
Stefan Willich is the founder and conductor of the World Doctors Orchestra (WDO). He studied violin, chamber music, and conducting in Stuttgart and Berlin, and participated in prestigious conducting workshops with Sergiu Celibidache (Munich), Leon Fleisher (Boston, Tanglewood) and Leon Barzin (Paris).
His professional path, however, led him first into medicine, where he became a highly regarded internist and epidemiologist, focusing on cardiovascular disease, prevention, health economics, integrative medicine, and music and medicine. He worked for several years at Harvard University in Boston, and in 1995 was appointed Professor and Director of the Institute of Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics at the Charité – Berlin University of Medicine. From 2012 to 2014, Stefan Willich was President of the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin. In 2021, he received the Alumni Award of Merit from the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the highest award for former graduates of the institution.
Stefan Willich has regularly appeared as conductor mainly in Germany and the USA where he is principal guest conductor of the CityMusic Cleveland Orchestra. In 2008 he founded the WDO that has given many charity concerts worldwide. As artistic director he led the WDO to great success. Particular highlights include performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Berlin in 2010 for the World Health Summit, and Mahler's Second Symphony (Resurrection) in Washington in 2011 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of September 11. He has worked together with outstanding soloists including Peter Zazofsky, Sergey Khachatryan, Tanja Becker-Bender, Aida-Carmen Soanea, Tamaki Kawakubo, Wenzel Fuchs, Anja Kampe, Jeanine De Bique, Falk Struckmann, Jochen Kowalski, Alexei Lubimov, Xavier de Maistre, Delphine Haidan, Emily Bear, Cunmo Yin, Evelyn Glennie, and with the Vienna Boys’ Choir.
Dr. Jeremy Faust
Jeremy Samuel Faust MD, MS, MA is the artistic director of the Longwood Chorus, Boston’s chorus of medical and science professionals. He was founding artistic director of the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco (2010 ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming) and served as board president and artistic advisor for Roomful of Teeth (2014 GRAMMY award for Best Classical Chamber Music Performance, and premiering ensemble of Caroline Shaw’s Partita, recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music) from 2010-2020. He has conducted the Canticum Novum Singers (New York), the UC Davis University Chorus and Chamber singers, and sung professionally at the Grand Teton Music Festival, with the Choir of Men and Boys at St. Thomas Church in New York, and with Judith Clurman’s Essential Voices USA. Dr. Faust is an attending emergency medicine physician at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in the Division of Health Policy and Public Health and serves on the faculty of Harvard Medical School.
About the Soloist
Photograph by Bo Huang
Lindsay Kesselman, Soprano
Hailed by Fanfare Magazine as an “artist of growing reputation for her artistry and intelligence...with a voice of goddess-like splendor” Lindsay Kesselman is a two time GRAMMY-nominated soprano who passionately advocates for contemporary music.
Recent and upcoming highlights include the premiere of Energy in All Directions by Kenneth Frazelle with Sandbox Percussion at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the role of Anna in Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins with the Charlotte Symphony, the role of Ada Lovelace in a new opera, Galaxies in Her Eyes by Mark Lanz Weiser and Amy Punt, Astronautica: Voices of Women in Space with Voices of Ascension, ongoing performances of two works written for Kesselman by John Mackey with orchestras and wind symphonies across the country, the John Corigliano 80th birthday celebration at National Sawdust (2018), Quixote (Amy Beth Kirsten and Mark DeChiazza) with Peak Performances at Montclair State University (2017), a leading role in Louis Andriessen’s opera Theatre of the World with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Dutch National Opera and an international tour of Einstein on the Beach with the Philip Glass Ensemble (2012-2015).
Kesselman is featured on several recent recordings: Chris Cerrone’s The Arching Path (2021, In a Circle Records), Russell Hartenberger’s Requiem for Percussion and Voices (2019, Nexus Records), Chris Cerrone’s The Pieces That Fall to Earth with Wild Up (2019, New Amsterdam Records), Mathew Rosenblum’s Lament/Witches’ Sabbath with the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble (2018, New Focus Recordings), Louis Andriessen’s Theatre of the World with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (2017, Nonesuch), and Jon Magnussen’s Twinge with HAVEN (2016, Blue Griffin).
Kesselman has been the resident soprano of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble for 12 seasons and HAVEN, Kesselman’s trio with Kimberly Cole Luevano, clarinet and Midori Koga, piano (www.haventrio.com) actively commissions and tours throughout North America. HAVEN is the recipient of a 2021 Barlow Endowment for Music Composition award with composer David Biedenbender and a 2021 Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant with composer Ivette Herryman Rodriguez.
Kesselman holds degrees in voice performance and music education from Rice University and Michigan State University. She is represented by Trudy Chan at Black Tea Music and lives in Charlotte, NC with her son Rowan. More information can be found at: www.lindsaykesselman.com