Margaret Patrick

Margaret Patrick (1913–1994) was "Ebony" in Ebony and Ivory, the name given to a pair of great-grandmothers in New Jersey, one white and one black, who played classical piano together. Each had a stroke in 1982 and became partially disabled. They were introduced to one another the following year and began playing piano together, one hand each. A reporter covering their story dubbed them "Ebony and Ivory" after the 1982 hit song by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder.

Patrick grew up in Harlem and started playing the piano at the age of eight and immediately fell in love with it. At the age of ten, she began to accompany her sister, who played violin and by the time she was twelve, she was accompanying local singers and orchestras. In 1929, aged 16, she graduated from the Martin Smith Conservatory of Music and was awarded a gold medal for having passed her piano and theory classes with honors.

Patrick married in 1933 and became a piano teacher and taught for 50 years. She continued accompanying singers and orchestras. She also played the organ and conducted the choir of a Presbyterian church in the Bronx. At one point, she directed a choir that sang with Duke Ellington and his orchestra, a highpoint in her life. "I felt elated to work with him," she told McCall's magazine. In January 1982, she had a stroke that left her disabled on her right side and unable to speak. After months in the hospital, she returned to her home in Englewood, New Jersey, able to speak a little bit, but unable to move her right hand enough to play the piano.

In late 1982, Patrick began going for therapy at Southeast Senior Center for Independent Living. In early 1983, the program director introduced her to Ruth Eisenberg, another great-grandmother who also had a stroke in 1982. She had seen Eisenberg sitting at the piano, playing with one hand and looking depressed. Patrick said, "She told us: 'You have something in common, the piano. Put your two good hands and your heads together, and see what you can come up with.' "Eisenberg added, "Immediately we got to talking about Chopin. And then we sat down at the piano and played Chopin's 'Minute Waltz'. I played the treble with my right hand; she played the bass with her left." They happily discovered they knew the same music.

...
Wikipedia