Sep. 28, 2023 By Rachel Butler
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz donated her late father David Katz’s piano to Queens College earlier this month.
The Concert Grand Steinway piano will be used by students in the college’s Aaron Copland School of Music. David Katz was the founder of the Queens Symphony Orchestra (QSO), which is the only professional orchestra in the borough.
For many years, QSO performed in Colden Auditorium, a venue in the college’s Kupferberg Center for the Arts. The donation commemorates his efforts to make classical music more accessible to communities in Queens.
Music students Ricky Moreira, Binghao Li, and Donovan Iemma performed selections from the works of Beethoven, Granados and Mozart, respectively, on the newly donated piano on the night of the donation.
“Music is international and it’s a language that everybody understands,” Katz said. “It not only teaches you music it teaches you how to think and be outside the box, creativity. It’s what colleges and law schools look for on applications because they know that you have a talent and you stick with it. Hopefully future generations will learn on this and I thank Queens College for the work they do.”
Queens College was also gifted a plaque with the following inscription: “In loving memory of Maestro David Katz for his decades of commitment to music in the borough of Queens.”