MOUNT WASHINGTON, Md. — Amir Kadamani Gonzalez is tuning up his violin.
WATCH: Student musician lives with senior citizens, creates connection through live music
The Colombian native has played in concert halls around the world. This time, it’s for a more intimate crowd, the residents at Springwell Senior Living Community in Mount Washington.
Amir is the newest musician-in-residence here, continuing a groundbreaking partnership that began 10 years ago with Peabody Music Conservatory, where he’s a graduate student.
“Everyone listens to music differently,” Amir says. “Everybody gets something different from music, and it’s very personal how they derive meaning, diversion, entertainment for music, healing, and still, they connect us.”
He doesn’t just show up and play. He lives here.
“I see these people every day,” Amir says. “I get to know who they are, what they like, what kind of music they like, just more about them personally. At the concert stage you don’t have that individual personal connection with the people who are listening to you.”
The musician-in-residence program has spread to other senior communities nationally, giving a social and emotional boost to the seniors and proving that live music creates powerful connections across generations.
“It’s a gift for everybody,” says Springwell resident Rachel Krug. “The ability to be connected to a musician. I mean, many of us may have been to concerts where the performance is, you know, 99 miles away. But here you can see how they are feeling about what music means to them, and it helps to connect what music means to us.”
It’s the joy Rachel and other seniors here express when he’s playing that Amir says he’ll remember long after his residency is over.
“There was someone who hadn’t talked much at all in weeks,” Amir says, “and yet, I believe I played ‘I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You’ by Elvis Presley, and she knew the entire song. All the lyrics she sang it through, and at the end she said, ‘Oh, that was really beautiful.’ You do it because of those kinds of moments.”
