Music
Rice is an accomplished pianist and has performed in public since she was a young girl. At the age of 15, she played Mozart with the Denver Symphony, and while Secretary of State she played regularly with a chamber music group in Washington. She does not play professionally, but has performed at diplomatic events at embassies, including a performance for Queen Elizabeth II, and she has performed in public with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and singer Aretha Franklin. In 2005, Rice accompanied Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick, a 21 year-old soprano, for a benefit concert for the Pulmonary Hypertension Association at the Kennedy Center in Washington. She performed briefly during her cameo appearance in the "Everything Sunny All the Time Always" episode of 30 Rock. She has stated that her favorite composer is Johannes Brahms, because she thinks Brahms's music is "passionate but not sentimental." On a complementary note, on Friday, April 10, 2009 on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, she stated that her favorite band is Led Zeppelin.
As Secretary of State, Rice was ex officio a member of the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. As the end of their tenures approached in January 2009, outgoing President Bush appointed her to a six-year term as a general trustee, filling a vacancy on the board.
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“As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)