Music at Emory 2015-2016 The Star Spangled Banner

The Star Spangled Banner John Stafford Smith (1750-1836)

André Nahmias, guest conductor.

Professor Nahmias has been a professor at Emory University since 1964. A vibrant supporter of the performing arts, Dr. Nahmias "won the orchestra" in an auction supporting the arts at Emory University. Here, the Star Spangled Banner is most fitting. In his personal notes, he is proud to say that then Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson presided over his citizenship ceremony in 1952.

From the Emory Report:
May 8 , 2006
A promise of passion: Nahmias shines light on AIDS’ smallest victims
BY MICHAEL TERRAZAS

André Nahmias has passion. Lots of it. It bubbles over during breakfast as the professor emeritus of pediatrics and public health talks about children, and about AIDS, and about children with AIDS—much like the characters who inhabit a new play/cantata Nahmias has created with the help of colleague Tamara Makdad Albrecht from Emory’s music department.

Children of AIDS: The Grief and The Promise is a four-act play/cantata that attempts to chronicle the history of AIDS reflected through what Nahmias says is a too-often overlooked segment of its victims: children. It follows the story of Adorée, who learns as a 12-year-old in 1989 that she is infected with HIV, grows into a teenager who can manage the disease with the help of newly discovered medications, then becomes a pediatrician herself dedicated to helping the world’s children overcome and prevent the disease that so affected her life.

“That’s the promise,” says Nahmias, with a reminder that—at least in Africa—HIV does not have to infect children to threaten their lives. Millions of African children live today as orphans of the disease that killed both of their parents. “Can we do for sub-Saharan Africa and other developing countries,” he asks, “what we have done for developed countries?”

Nahmias himself has done quite a bit, locally and globally. In 1983, he helped to establish in Georgia the first pediatric AIDS clinic at Grady Hospital and the state’s AIDS task force. A year later he founded in Geneva the International Interdisciplinary AIDS Foundation, then helped organize the first conference on AIDS’ effects on heterosexual women, children and adolescents.

By then, Nahmias had obtained one of the National Institutes of Health’s first multi-institutional drug discovery grants that paved the way for Emory to become a leader in the development of effective AIDS drugs. With collaborators from Emory’s Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Nahmias helped establish Grady as the first site in the nation to regularly test (with consent) pregnant women for HIV in 1987—this at a time when AIDS was still perceived as a disease that predominantly affected homosexual men and intravenous drug users, a stigma that resulted in little national attention and less funding. The early testing at Grady prevented breast milk transmission of HIV, as positive mothers were advised not to nurse their babies.

Still, the jump from pediatrics to playwriting is one not too many people make, but then Nahmias always has had an appreciation for the artistic side of life. After leaving his native Egypt in the late 1940s to study at the University of Texas, he wrote several plays. Still relevant is one entitled Who Does He Think He Is?, which featured an Animal Farm-style chorus of creatures decrying the hubris of man, as humanity threatened to wipe out not only his own species but all others through nuclear holocaust.

But, after enrolling in medical school at George Washington University, there followed a period of some three decades during which he simply did not have time to pursue his humanistic side. In a 2000 Academic Exchange essay, Nahmias wrote, “My freshman year [at George Washington] was the worst in my life, partly due to my holding three jobs, but primarily because I had to leave behind all pretense of using my brain, except for rote memory.”...
...Following his retirement in 2003, Nahmias continued to let his curiosities range, auditing classes in everything from music and drama to philosophy and literature.
The Grief and The Promise could indeed yield even greater promise. Fresh from winning first prize at a World AIDS Day competition in December, the show has proven to be an entertaining, powerful way to call attention to AIDS victims who don’t often make headlines, and it no doubt will be performed again. Nahmias hopes to make the play and the music available free of charge to nonprofit or governmental organizations.

“It’s very timely with all the recent interest in Africa,” Nahmias says. “We’re finally getting leaders to realize—and act on—a problem that’s been recognized for more than 25 years.”