Yo-Yo Ma performs at a vaccination clinic in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, March 14, 2021. Photo courtesy Berkshire Community College.
“In an airy, sunny gymnasium on Saturday afternoon, under basketball hoops and banners, in front of people freshly pricked and waiting for minutes to pass, Yo-Yo Ma played a little Bach,” writes Paulina Firozi in Sunday’s (3/14) Washington Post. “The world-renowned cellist, who is 65, had gone to the vaccination clinic at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, Mass., for his second coronavirus vaccine dose…. After getting his shot, he took a seat along a padded blue wall of the gym, near others waiting out their 15-minute post-vaccination observation time, and surprised them with a performance. Leslie Drager, the lead clinical manager for the vaccination site, said that when Ma started to play, … ‘Everybody just went quiet and went to watch and listen,’ Drager said…. Videos … show Ma masked and seated along a wall. Vaccine recipients are scattered and seated nearby as he played the prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major [and] ‘Ave Maria.’ ‘It just brought that whole room together,’ [nurse Hilary] Bashara said.… Drager said, ‘Maybe this is the beginning of what we’re going to see this summer … to get out and get our lives back.’ ”
