Mom hosted an impromptu concert after receiving his vaccination on Saturday.
For the past year, world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma has worked to provide comfort and support to those struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Saturday, he turned a vaccination clinic in Massachusetts into a temporary concert hall, at a time when residents called it a symbolic representation of “the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Mom, 65, got his second shot with his wife, Jill Hornor, at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on Saturday.
When he arrived at the clinic with his cello, the nurse who gave his vaccine asked if he was willing to use his 15-minute observation period to present a short concert for those in the waiting area.
The famous cellist was ‘delighted’, Richard Hall of the Berkshire COVID-19 Vaccine Collaborative told ABC News because he ‘wanted to give something back to the community’.
Mom wore a cap and T-shirt and put on masked and socially distanced from others while playing a range of classic choices, including Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria” and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suite no. 1 in G Major, Prélude.
“I think everyone there was touched just to listen to him,” Hall said.
Berkshire County, Massachusetts, is known for its art community and after a year in which the arts were largely silenced, “it was quite special to just go and play the cello after him,” Hall said.
A year ago, when the pandemic began, Ma started an online series titled ‘#SongsOfComfort’, in an effort to provide comfort and alleviate anxiety ‘in the face of fear and isolation. ‘
“In these days of anxiety, I wanted to find a way to continue sharing the music that comforts me,” Mom wrote on Twitter exactly one year before receiving his second recording.
His social media project, which began as short, self-filming videos filmed from home, soon expanded into a worldwide effort reaching more than 18 million people, according to Mom’s website.
In December, Mom and pianist Kathryn Stott released an album titled ‘Songs of Comfort and Hope’.
“Songs are few time capsules of emotions: they can contain dreams and desires that have been lost and feelings of great spirit, optimism and unity,” Ma and Stott wrote in the album’s announcement. “Songs bring a sense of community, identity and purpose, that transcends boundaries and binds us together in gratitude, comfort and encouragement.”