What’s for dinner? Most of us look in the fridge, the freezer, and go from there. But for many in our area, deciding what to eat is a daily struggle. Violist Fitz Gary is among those using music to help, as Kimberlea Daggy reports.
FITZ GARY: It’s an issue that’s often swept under the rug. I think we think about hunger being a problem in other countries and not so much our country. The number of how many people don’t know where there next meal is coming from is sort of shocking to us that’s happening in our area. The Blue Ridge Area Food Bank serves over 120,000 people every month.
Charlottesville native and violist Fitz Gary has performed all over the world. But for the last five years, he’s used music as a platform to raise hunger awareness. That idea began back in 2009 with another community-minded violist, Carol Roland, who teaches at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. After she created a concert series to support the hungry, other communities latched onto the idea, and now professional and student musicians all over the country are playing concerts to benefit the hungry, as Fitz Gary explains.
GARY: To date we’ve raised 82,000 meals for the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank and we’d love to bring that number to over 100,000. At the main benefit concerts, patrons are asked to bring either a canned food or monetary contribution to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank. That’s really our main goal, is providing the audience with lovely chamber music and inspire people to donate to the local food bank and hopefully make a difference in solving this problem.
Music Feeds Us presents two concerts this weekend. Here are the details.