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For Marjorie Hahn, longtime executive and music director of the South Florida Youth Symphony (SFYS), one of the nation’s leading youth music organizations, the COVID-19 pandemic presented a world of challenges.
Keeping nearly 200 young musicians focused, arranging weekly Zoom practices and rehearsing for online concerts (four so far) were just some of the hurdles Hahn — still recognized as one of South Florida’s leading French horn players/instructors — had to overcome.
After capturing Gold Medals in 2017 in Washington, DC and Prague in 2019 and a 2018 performance at Carnegie Hall, Hahn and the SFYS were ready to begin an eight-day music exchange tour Uruguay and Argentina when the pandemic hit.
“Keeping the kids enthused and focused has been a real challenge,” said Hahn, who has been with the SFYS since its inception by her step father, Maestro Carmen Nappo, in 1964.
“Like everyone during this pandemic, they get down. My instructors and I let them know that music does matter, and it touches the lives of countless people. It’s just touching those lives online right now, rather than in person.”
In addition to motivating her young musicians, Hahn had to “engage” herself and not sit around moping.
So, Hahn, who originally was an art major when she entered then Miami Dade Community College-North before switching to music and receiving her bachelor’s degree at the University of Georgia, turned to one of her original passions — painting — for her own personal inspiration.
“I’ve always been an artist, inheriting the gift from my father, who was a commercial artist,” she said with a smile while sitting in her home “studio.” “In high school [North Miami Senior High] I did drawings, sculptures and oil paintings and in college it was acrylics. I always loved to draw and paint.”
But as her involvement with the youth symphony grew — she took over as executive director and music director in 1981 — her time for the visual arts diminished.
Then, a year before the pandemic hit, Hahn and her husband, Jack, were on a cruise to Norway when she took notice of a water color artist from the cruise line.
“I can do that,” she remembered saying. “But I don’t think I’ll ever have the time.”
Then the pandemic hit.
Now Hahn has done some 24 paintings since April, mostly from photographs, as well as some still life. Most of the paintings are now hanging in the homes of friends and relatives but recently she was commissioned for one of her creations by a former youth symphony student.
“Actually, getting paid was exciting,” she said with a laugh. “Music will always be No. 1 in my life, but the artistic side of me has been reawakened during this unusual time we’re all experiencing. Painting — creating — has been fun.”
For more information on the South Florida Youth Symphony, which is practicing on Zoom and is inviting talented young musicians to audition,visit SYFS.net, send email to MakeMusic@sfys.net or call 305-238-2729.
