Neurosurgeon Returns to Sing at Washington Island Music Festival

The soloist at the concluding concert on August 15 of the Washington Island Music Festival is prominent, Chicago-area neurosurgeon, Dr. Douglas E. Anderson. A specialist in the cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach, Anderson has performed at the music festival for the past 10 years.

While he was in college Anderson aimed at a career in music, saying “I don’t remember life without singing,” in a Chicago Public Radio interview. However, Anderson discovered it wasn’t realistic for him to spend his life completely in music. While continuing to sing, he began a medical career, and over the next 30 years at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois, he became a leader in his field of neurosurgery. He pioneered in deep brain stimulation, which can quell or eliminate tremors in Parkinson’s and other brain disorders such as Huntington’s disease and dystonia. The surgery has even been used to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder and debilitating headaches.

The Washington Island Music Festival, directed by Stephen Colburn, principal oboe with the Milwaukee Symphony, is in its 17th year. This year the closing concert will feature Anderson, together with the festival chorus and ensemble, in the major work, Five Mystical Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The five songs are “Easter,” “I Got Me Flowers,” “Love Bade Me Welcome,” “The Call” and “Antiphon.” The last, for full chorus, may be familiar to some as the music Vaughan Williams uses in his familiar anthem, “Let All the World in Every Corner Sing.”

The concert will be Friday night August 15 at 7:30 pm at the Trueblood Performing Art Center, preceded by a talk at 7 pm by Samantha George. Tickets may be purchased at the door, by calling the festival at 920.847.3434 or visiting the Web site http://www.WashingtonIslandMusicFestival.com.