The piano in the lobby of Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring was in poor condition, making it difficult for teen volunteers to perform live music for patients and staff.
“Some of the notes would stick or they were just terribly out of tune,” Charlotte Holliday, a piano teacher and the founder and executive director of The Tacy Foundation, told Montgomery Magazine.
“One leg was so broken that it actually wasn’t even touching the ground,” Richard Pederson, the president of The Tacy Foundation, said. “So a knock in the right direction — or wrong direction — could have tumbled the whole thing.”
Thanks to the local music-based nonprofit, two Holy Cross Hospitals in Montgomery County — Silver Spring and Germantown — now house new Kawai digital keyboards in their lobbies as of late March. The two keyboards have a retail value of more than $10,000.
The Tacy Foundation is a Germantown-based nonprofit launched in 2008 to empower children and teens in the Washington, D.C., area to share hope with people in need through music.
Student volunteers played the new pianos for the first time earlier this spring. The young musicians are among the hundreds of students who perform live music at dozens of senior residences and hospitals in Maryland, Virginia and D.C., according to Pederson.
The Tacy Foundation began bringing live music to Holy Cross Germantown Hospital in early 2018. “People in the lobby do stop and listen,” Pederson said.
“[Providing brand new pianos] up[s] the quality of the music that the kids are giving out, and [we] know that we have made a contribution,” Pederson added. “Rather than just taking what was available … we put our money where our mouth is in terms of giving the audience the opportunity to hear the best sound by our wonderful volunteer musicians.”
“We wanted to make sure there was an equal playing field for pianists who can’t put [their instruments] in their backpack and go play,” Holliday said.
The longtime piano teacher said that while the young pianists didn’t complain, they seemed “a little more reluctant to come” to Holy Cross for volunteer opportunities due to the quality of the old pianos.
“There were more instrumentalists than pianists at one point,” Holliday said.
She went through Schaeffer’s Piano Company to purchase both digital keyboards, which she said feel and sound authentic: “They shade and mold phrases like a real piano. I’m just amazed.”
The keyboards, being digital, don’t require any maintenance or tuning, and they take up less space compared to the previous Steinway, according to Holliday.
“As soon as we put the pianos in, there were eight kids who came to play that Saturday,” Holliday said.
The hospital staff at both Holy Cross locations also expressed excitement.
“[The installation] was in the middle of the day … and the staff came out at Silver Spring. They were just absolutely thrilled,” Holliday said. “It was very well received happily in both places.”
The Tacy Foundation’s philosophy is that music is known to help with healing, according to Holliday.
“This was discovered in the 1800s by a doctor in France who went around and noted those people who had studied music — or who had played music or even listened to music — how their healing was facilitated better,” Holliday said. “Certainly, they needed medicine [or] surgery, but this facilitated a more complete and faster recovery.”
The finding has continued to the present day, and many health care institutions across the nation have active music and arts programs for patients.
“The value of music is proven,” Pederson said, adding that the Tacy Foundation’s motto is “inspiring hope, note by note.”
Holliday thanked Schaeffer’s for the delivery of the digital keyboards and the removal of the two old pianos, which the company took to reuse the parts.
“Almost with the blink of an eye, they had the instruments ready to go, and they had the movers ready to take them and deliver them,” she said. “They know me, so they know this is what we do. We go out in the community, and we do our best to raise the hearts and the minds of not just the elderly, but of the young people, to connect.”
“I want to thank the two hospitals for promoting the notion that music heals and that music provides healing and hope for the days ahead,” Holliday said.
Zoe Bell is a Tacy Foundation alumna and former student of the Holliday Piano Studio from 2007 to 2020.
