Our New Orleanian friend (and lover of Shakespeare) Professor Thorny Penfield shuffled off this mortal coil early Tuesday morning, August 21, in the company of his beloved wife, Diane, and close New York family and friends.

He’d suffered a cerebral hemorrhage approximately two weeks ago, and had been in intensive care at Albany, New York, near his lifelong summer home on Lake George. He was not able to recover. He will be cremated and a music-heavy celebratio...