“After the word ‘cancer,’ [conductor] Robert Franz didn’t hear a thing,” writes Trevor Wilhelm in Friday’s (6/10) Windsor Star (Canada). “As the doctor explained the situation—non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Stage 4—Franz sat stunned and silent… For even casual followers of Windsor Symphony Orchestra, it would have been obvious early this year that something was going on…. He had plummeted from 180 pounds to 150…. ‘That was before chemo,’ [Franz said]…. It started last summer with some tingling in his left hand…. ‘By the end of October the pain was unbearable,’ [said Franz].… The doctors … did a CAT scan. ‘That’s when they found the tumor.… ‘I have a husband and we have three daughters,’ said Franz. ‘I was only 53 at the time..’ … Franz, a U.S. citizen, [took] the helm of the WSO in 2013. He’s also the artistic director of the Boise [Idaho] Baroque Orchestra, recently finished a tenure as associate conductor of the Houston Symphony…. The results of a PET scan came back last week. ‘The oncologists … feel very, very confident that the cancer itself is gone,’ said Franz…. ‘You never know what somebody is going through and sometimes they don’t even know what they’re going through.’ ”
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