Baylor scientist and flutist contributes to global musical collaboration

If you blink you might miss Dr. Lynn Zechiedrich’s cameo on a United Nations Foundation’s music video, but you most certainly can hear her throughout the performance. Zechiedrich, a professor of virology and microbiology at Baylor and a classically trained flutist, joined 170 musical artists from six continents to create a music video of the Oscar nominated song “I’m Standing With You” in support of the United Nations Foundation’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization (WHO).

“The video’s message of hope, unity and ‘we’re all in this together’ is one that is needed right now,” said Zechiedrich.

Zechiedrich learned about the opportunity through her involvement with the Texas Medical Center Orchestra (the TMC Orchestra is misidentified as the Texas Medical Symphony Orchestra in the video credits). Its director, Libi Lebel, was contacted back in April by the video’s organizers who she new through her professional connections. Other members of the TMC Orchestra also took part in the video, including many other members of the Baylor community.

Read the full article on the Baylor College of Medicine website.

The Med Center Orchestra - ‘Physicians by day, musicians by night’

Microbiologist Lynn Zechiedrich took the stage at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2012 with dozens of other Houston-area medical professionals. Toward the end of the evening, she looked out at the audience, then lifted her flute to her lips to perform a solo.

“There were just tears of joy pouring down my face as I played those notes,” says Zechiedrich, a Buzz resident and a professor at Baylor College of Medicine, “and then the crowd jumps to their feet and erupts in applause.”

Zechiedrich is one of 80 members of the Texas Medical Center Orchestra, a group of doctors, nurses, medical students, scientists, dentists, therapists and researchers who’ve banded together to pursue their love of music and share it. They often arrive at weekly practices dressed in scrubs, and their orchestra is a much-needed creative outlet.

It’s also one of only a few U.S. community orchestras based in the medical community. For the last 20 years, the TMC orchestra has performed for patients and visitors in locations across the Texas Medical Center. Each year it gives four or five performances at prestigious concert halls. In 2017 and 2018, it won the American Prize for best community orchestra.

“I love these people – they’re like a family,” says Zechiedrich. 

Zechiedrich began playing the flute as a child. She started in middle school, and won awards including All-State and All-American. Her dream was to play in an orchestra, but she also fell in love with science. During post-doc work, flute playing fell to the wayside, and after she moved to Houston in the late 1990s, she wasn’t even sure where her flute was. 

But in 2000, while giving a lecture at TMC, she saw a poster advertising a doctors orchestra. She auditioned and was accepted into the fledgling group. “I was so excited to go to the first rehearsal,” Zechiedrich says. 

To read the full article, visit The Buzz Magazines website.

TMCO Named NATIONAL FINALISTS: The American Prize ERNST BACON MEMORIAL AWARD for the PERFORMANCE of AMERICAN MUSIC, COMMUNITY ensemble division, 2019-20

The American Prize National Nonprofit Competitions in the Performing Arts, David (Volosin) Katz, founder and chief judge, is pleased to announce NATIONAL FINALISTS for the ERNST BACON MEMORIAL AWARD for the PERFORMANCE of AMERICAN MUSIC, 2019-20, in the ensemble division. Congratulations!

"Many semi-finalists have been advanced. At The American Prize, it is never about 'too many finalists' —why should there be an arbitrary number?—but about respecting (and encouraging) artists at all levels of endeavor—and never more so than during this very difficult time in the world history of the performing arts."—DK

The Texas Medical Center Orchestra was named as one of the National Finalists for The American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music, Community ensemble division for 2019-2020.