#CoronaCovers: Rice violin student practices social distancing while performing ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’

MEDIA ADVISORY

Jeff Falk
612-964-7236
jfalk@rice.edu

Amy McCaig
217-417-2901
amym@rice.edu

#CoronaCovers: Rice violin student practices social distancing while performing ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’

HOUSTON – (March 26, 2020) – Hand-holding is the last thing anyone should do during the COVID-19 pandemic, but a Rice University Shepherd School violin student won’t let social distancing stop her from doing what she does best.

Photo credit: Allison Smith

Although her university has discontinued classroom instruction for the spring semester, Allison Smith is applying her talents to a series of homebound musical performances called #CoronaCovers. In the most recent posting to her YouTube channel, the sophomore violin student and her pianist brother Nathan, a high school senior, play an instrumental version of the Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” in their home in Dublin, Ohio.

Allison Smith is a student of Paul Kantor, the Sallie Shepherd Perkins Professor of Violin at Rice. She is a Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation Scholarship in Violin recipient.

Members of the media are invited to share the video on their various platforms. The Smiths are available for interviews via Facetime or Skype.  For more information, contact Amy McCaig, senior media relations specialist at Rice, at 217-417-2901 or amym@rice.edu.

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This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu.

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Related materials:

Photo link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpgcZiGNboc

Photo credit: Allison Smith

Rice’s Shepherd School of Music: https://music.rice.edu/

Allison Smith’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/allisonviolin2000/feed

Allison and Nathan Smith’s cover of “I Want To Hold Your Hand”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpgcZiGNboc

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,962 undergraduates and 3,027 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 4 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

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