BWH Physicians Perform at Partners Night at the Pops
Michael Zinner and Jessica Dudley perform with the Pops.
The 12th annual Partners Night at the Pops: A Celebration in Honor of Our Physicians was held in June at Symphony Hall, thanks to the ongoing support of John Hancock Financial. Conductor Keith Lockhart led the Boston Pops Orchestra in “A Richard Rodgers Celebration,” honoring the prolific American composer who wrote 40 musicals in his lifetime, including Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The Sound of Music, Carousel and The King and I. The Boston Pops performed many selections from these musicals and others to entertain the nearly 1,000 Partners physicians and their guests in attendance.
Not to be outdone by the Tony Award winning guest singer Victoria Clark, Partners own “Physician Talent” performed live on stage with the Pops at Symphony Hall. The eight physicians who comprised this year’s Talent were set up as two teams. Michael Zinner, MD, chief of Surgery BWH, led one of the teams, and Andrew Warshaw, MD, chief of Surgery at MGH, led the other team. Also representing BWH on Zinner’s team was Jessica Dudley, MD, chief medical officer of the BWPO.
After Keith Lockhart introduced the physicians to the audience, he asked Drs. Warshaw and Zinner what song they were going to sing; both replied, “It’s a surprise”. At that moment, the overhead screen displayed: Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better along with pictures of Warshaw and Zinner. This sparked appreciative laughter from the audience.
Clever and witty custom lyrics were written for the song to make it health care related and Partners-specific. In the end, the two teams were united as one as the lyrics honored Partners President and CEO James Mongan, MD, who will be retiring at the end of the year, and referenced Partners system-wide commitment to High Performance Medicine (try rhyming that!).
Along with Dudley, Zinner’s singing teammates were George Clairmont, MD, Internal Medicine, from PCHI, and Pardon Kenney, MD, chief of Surgery at Faulkner Hospital. Throughout the song, Zinner bantered about with Warshaw with such lyrics as “I can clip your cyst off, with a little twist-off” to which Zinner replied, “I can snatch your polyp, with a mighty wallop.”
Dudley sang, “Temp’ratures you can take, we can take faster; we find pneumonia much faster than you” to her counterpart, Everett Lyn, MD, Emergency Medicine, from North Shore Medical Center, on Warshaw’s team.
Along with Lyn, Warshaw’s team consisted of Erica Johnson, MD, General Internal Medicine, from Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and Britain Nicholson, MD, Internal Medicine, from MGH
The performance was brilliantly delivered and highly entertaining, and the physicians seemed to truly enjoy their moment in the spotlight on stage at Symphony Hall.
The evening’s entertainment started with a moving performance by the Boston Children’s Chorus, a multi-racial, multi-cultural arts organization bringing together children in grades 2 to 12 from Boston’s diverse racial, ethnic and socioeconomic communities.
Partners would like to thank Keith Lockhart, the Boston Pops and our own Physician Talent for a thoroughly enjoyable evening and John Hancock for its ongoing commitment and generous sponsorship of the annual Partners Night at the Pops: A Celebration in Honor of Our Physicians.