Marion Katz, a 92-year-old Nashville resident, had some skepticism when she rolled her wheelchair toward a laptop sitting on the kitchen table. But when she heard the first note from a teenager’s violin on a recent Sunday night, her brightest day of the coronavirus pandemic had arrived.
“I don’t care about computers and all that jazz,” Katz said. “But when I realized that music was being played just for me, it was amazement.”
Katz, a Jewish woman who fled Nazi Germany in 1933 as a child, is among a few older Nashvillians receiving private performances by classical music students from Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music using video conferencing apps during the pandemic.
Katz usually attends Blair School concerts in the spring, but the safer-at-home order has prevented that. Her caretakers recently connected her on a Zoom call to some young performers who had a heart-warming gift.
“It makes you feel really nice to play for them — really nice,” said Georgia Martin, a 14-year-old violinist at Blair School. “I was sad for missing out on a lot of recitals. But I’m helping people have a better day, and that motivates me.”
