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. tour2011/2012 Performing Arts Newsnotes from Around the World www.acfea.com Amore: Moments That Pacific INSIDE THIS ISSUE 2 Can Change the World Symphony Loma Linda Academy Symphonic Band Allegro 3 Youth Community Edmonton Youth Choir ITALY Children’s Choir 3 (director, Orchestra Denver Young Artists Orchestra Christy 4 Elsner) Focuses on Portland toured Symphonic Girlchoir Italy in Bulgaria 5 June, Jonathan Griffith 2011, Here’s proof that patience pays Singers and, while they were off: after eight or so years of 5 gone, kept a tour blog discussion, two conductors Saskatoon following them from Children’s Choir and four orchestra managers, 6 Naples to Rome and back the Pacific Santa Barbara Allegro performs in the Santuario del home. The following was Symphony Youth Choral Society Buon Consiglio in Torre del Greco, Italy posted by Kimberly Stout, Orchestra (from BULGARIA 6 a mother and chaperone, Orange County, Virginia after a concert in Torre del Greco, outside Naples. California) Children’s Chorus Allegro . continued on page 2 embarked on its first tour on 8 June 26, 2011, to the native Mississippi College country of its conductor, Maxim Singers Eshkenazy: Bulgaria. 8 Director Maxim Eshkenazy Greater Middletown ACFEA has arranged several Chorale and PSYO members perform in choir tours to this fascinating 9 Bulgaria Hall, Sofia University of Oregon PSYO . continued on page 4 Chamber Choir 10 University of Southern Maine Chamber Singers 11 North America Staff 12 Women in Song 12 Boston Children's Chorus Normandy, Orléans, Chartres Last Minute Save Sends and Paris. They performed at the American Military Cemetery in Normandy, the cloisters of the Abbaye Loma Linda Academy to France de la Trinité in Vendôme, Chartres Cathedral and in Paris on June 21 It is always exciting for ACFEA when we work with a group as part of France’s annual Fête de la for the first time, but there was an adrenalin rush added to Musique, an astonishing day on which FRANCE the excitement when we received this email from Giovanni thousands of performances of all Santos, the director of the Loma Linda Academy Symphonic types of music take place around the Band, at 9:40 am on Friday, September 24, 2010: country. “This is my last hope, before having to cancel an international In addition to sightseeing tours of tour. Would it be possible to have a tour planned for June 2011 for 11-13 days, Orléans and Paris, the group enjoyed to France, for $2,850 visiting the Château de Chambord, per person? I need to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. know ASAP, before this Being a Seventh-day Adventist school, Monday. You probably they had some dietary restrictions and can’t answer, but I limitations on what they could do on thought I should give it a Saturday, and ACFEA was pleased to one last shot.” respect those requirements and help The company with which the group adhere to them. We have he had been working had never before had the opportunity just told him that it could to tell restaurants in France that we not deliver the tour that needed 129 vegetarian meals: there it had been promising, were some raised Gallic eyebrows, and he was faced with but we’re told that it all worked out having to tell his many very well! Loma Linda performs an outdoor concert in the cloisters of high school students that Abbaye de la Trinité in Vendôme, France the trip to which they Only a few weeks after this tour, were so looking forward the group was back in touch with was cancelled. ACFEA loves a challenge, so with some hard work over the us to talk about its 2012 tour, so the weekend and some serious arm-twisting of hotels and airlines, Gio received the effort that we put into saving the proposal he needed at 11:40 am on that Monday. 2011 tour has led to a repeat client and a cherished ongoing relationship Just under nine months later, 129 members of the band, their families and between ACFEA and the Loma supporters enjoyed a varied and rewarding tour of France that encompassed Linda Academy. Allegro . continued from page 1 I am not normally at a loss for words, match the caliber of Allegro, and them with the most kind words of but I am struggling to choose the the girls experienced this when we how “they were like angels and right way to convey what we felt rehearsed earlier today. However, their music gave us all wings to after performing our first concert. it is taken to another level reach closer to God”, he gave them a when you add an entire church special blessing ”to not only carry on I do not think there are enough the beautiful gift of singing in their words to capture the most beautiful overflowing with people who had lives, but to carry that gift with them experience that we shared at a come with excited anticipation to in their heart always in everything small church in Torre del Greco by see our girls sing. We could all feel they do”. the name of Santuario del Buon the energy from the beginning with Consiglio. Our concert was part of a their warm welcome and singing They also presented us with four-day celebration of the life of from their own local choir, but the several special gifts to take home their past priest who founded the way the night proceeded we could to remember them by. Although orphanage at the church. He died have never imagined. There were appreciated, it was their genuine 50 years ago and they have been moments where my breath was kindness that they expressed in celebrating his life each year. This is a taken away and I could not keep dry everything they had done to receive relatively small community known as eyes, but it was not only me, it was us that we will never forget. They the ‘City of Flowers’. Although they also the perfect strangers who had made us feel like family in Italy! have had many struggles, we come not knowing what they They had prepared a beautiful saw the most positive side of its would hear. reception for all of us after the people tonight. When the girls had finished singing concert to socialize and shared an It is a special thing to be able to sing they were called back to do an amazing picture that they had made in a church where the acoustics encore. After the priest lavished completely from fresh flowers. It 2 Edmonton Youth Bridge Cultural Barriers by Katie Maxfield, Tour Participant rickety old bikes around the city wall hum of Xi’an. We wandered through a arose. CHINA After years of watching my three beautiful bamboo forest and through When we brothers trek all over the world a park in Nanjing in the pouring began to sing with their boychoir, I finally got my rain that refreshed our spirits (and in Chinese, the chance. This July, I our feet). We audience broke into travelled with 25 gorged ourselves applause and continued to applaud choristers in the on 18 varieties after every verse. They clearly loved Edmonton Youth of dumplings at it, and it quickly became one of our Choir to China, a special lunch. favorite songs to perform. where we toured In Shanghai, an for two weeks elevator took us At the end of every concert, audience and performed to the 88th floor members, especially children, would in Beijing, Xi'an, of the Jin Mao clamber onto the stage to take Nanjing, Hangzhou Tower, which photos with choristers. Between and Shanghai. provided a view photos, our choir director was busy over the city that As we adjusted keeping up with the demands for houses 23 million to the 14-hour his autograph on our CDs. At times people. time difference, it felt as if we were the center of we also adjusted We loved not only attention, not only onstage but to life in China, the sightseeing, everywhere we went. From our first including curiously but also the day in Tiananmen Square, we noticed translated signs Edmonton Youth Choir members enjoying concerts, which people surreptitiously taking pictures dinner in Beijing (‘Heart cerebral took place every of us or even in front of us, as if we disease sufferer, second day following afternoon were a tourist attraction. The bolder ascend the Great Wall to please watch rehearsals. One song that deeply ones would ask to take pictures with for’) and ‘squatty potties’ (footprints affected both the choir and the them, sometimes putting their arm and a hole in the ground). We hiked audience was a Chinese folk song, around us in a familiar way. up the steep stairs of the Great Wall, Mo Li Hua (Jasmine Flower Song). After shopping at a gift store one pausing to take pictures of the view This song and even the flower itself and of the Chinese characters carved have recently been suppressed by day, some of my friends and I sang into the stone. Chinese culture and the Chinese government because of O Canada in four-part harmony for symbolism gained new significance their association with the politically the shopkeeper. She clapped and as we walked through the ancient sensitive ‘Jasmine Revolution’ in beamed wordlessly at me and I felt Forbidden City. Most of us rode Tunisia. At our first concert, we were that, despite the language barrier, not sure how the audience would we had somehow become friends. It react. When the song was announced, was little experiences like these that there was more murmuring than we will remember most of all, that has been a tradition each year, but usual, but as the flute began to play through our music on and off the this year it was extra special as they the melody, the concert hall suddenly stage, we became not only tourists, needed nearly 20,000 flowers! The hushed, and then a barely perceptible but ambassadors.

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