Unable to Play, Pianist Goes Out Singing
Victoria Covington's final recital on September 11 at the Baldwin-Wallace College Lindsay-Crossman Chapel, will also be a "first."
Covington has taught and played piano at the Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory in Berea, Ohio, since 1976. Her physical disabilities-- a congenital defect that limited hand movement, and later, rheumatoid arthritis-- were challenges she overcame with good humor and careful planning.
As her condition worsened last year, she wanted to give a final piano recital. But she found she was physically unable to play. She turned to her first piano teacher, Ms. Fay McLaurin of Bennettsville, SC, and asked for advice. Ms. McLaurin suggested that Covington take up her first instrument again: her voice
In "A Season to Sing," Covington will make her debut as a vocal artist-- singing a varied program of spirituals and folk songs that she has been rehearsing for months. She is no longer able to play the piano, the instrument that defined her long career. She has made many adjustments to her repertoire over the years to accommodate her physical disabilities, and sees this as just another accommodation. She will retire from teaching, to study singing, at the end of 1999.
"The purposes of this program are to say farewell and to affirm the future," Covington says. "Piano performance is no longer physically possible, so I am choosing another medium where I can make a musical contribution."
Covington has long been a champion of musicians and others with disabilities, even as she has maintained an active career as a teacher and performer. She received the Harold Scharper Award from the University of Illinois, the highest honor paid to a graduate of the Division of Rehabilitation Education. She named the 1980 Handicapped Professional Woman of the Year in South Carolina, her home state.
Contact Victoria Covington at 440-826-2350, or Helen Rathburn in the Baldwin-Wallce College news office at 440-826-2325.
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