Schweitzer on the Esplanade

The amazing connections and resonances continue! Weeks after Jonathan McPhee decided to program Gene Scheer's Albert Schweitzer Portrait on the LSO's annual Summer concert on August 19, 2009 on the Esplanade, this photo surfaced--Dr. Albert Schweitzer, 1952 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, attending a Boston Pops concert on the Esplanade in 1949. Our thanks to the BSO Archives for acquiring this photograph for us.

Albert Schweitzer Portrait will be narrated by Dr. S. Allen Counter, whose own life resonates with Schweitzer's work. He is the founding Director of The Harvard Foundation of Harvard University, Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Neurophysiologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Following Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Counter took a group of students from the Harvard Foundation to Louisiana for a humanitarian mission.

Dr. Counter is also Consul General of Sweden for New England and was instrumental in helping LSO with its Nobel Violin Project.

I first met Allen in 1975 as my professor in Nat Sci 5, Harvard's pre-med Biology class. Our paths have continued to cross, at Harvard's Memorial Church, through our mutual interests in neurology, and through our mutual passion for humanitarian causes.