“For Thanksgiving, a group of doctors, nurses, residents, and medical researchers in Philadelphia is offering a note of hope during the coronavirus pandemic: Edward Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ from the Enigma Variations,” writes Peter Crimmins in Thursday’s (11/26) WHYY radio (Philadelphia). “Said conductor Dan Zhang, who is earning his medical Ph.D. researching brain cancer, ‘It embodies hope and courage we hope to have here.’ The Penn Med Symphony Orchestra comprises about 80 people in the medical field who play music on the side. It was founded in 2016 by Penn Medicine students…. When the PMSO realized the pandemic was not waning and there would be no way to congregate in the fall, the players went virtual. Zhang recorded himself conducting the ‘Nimrod’ movement to invisible musicians in an empty room, then sent that tape to all the players to record their individual parts alone…. The final mix [was] released Thanksgiving afternoon…. Alex Morrison, a [medical] resident … who plays trumpet with the Penn Med Symphony Orchestra, said ‘Nimrod’ is an emotional piece [that] could be the emotional soundtrack of the medical field during the worst pandemic in a century.”
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