As we countdown the hours until we fly back home, we have so much to be thankful for. We are grateful to all the parents who supported and encouraged their students to participate on this concert tour. We know that the students learned so much and that their lives will be touched in ways we don’t even know yet. We are also grateful to the parents who came along on the tour for all their help. It was nice to have the extra eyes and hands at many times. In particular, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Pam Owens (Elisabeth, violin) who went above and beyond the call of duty. Pam posted the blog each night in China. You may have noticed that we did not post anything when we arrived in Korea. Pam quickly volunteered to stay behind in China when a student on the second flight lost her passport and couldn’t leave. In a split second, she made the decision that she was the best person to stay and handle the situation, leaving her daughter and suitcase, and plunging into the unknown of dealing with a lost passport in China.
For two days she went to the U.S. Embassy and Chinese security offices, waited in lines, and adroitly and fortuitously managed to get a new passport and visa, and onto another flight to Korea yesterday. How can we ever say thank you enough for what she gave up to help out an MYA student! (note from PAM: What to do when left behind in China? First, go to the American Embassy and then call your 8 year old Chinese friend, Cynthia. Take full advantage of your extra time in China and go to the best Peking Duck restaurant in China with Cynthia's grandfather and get a certificate saying you were served their 1,150,249,510 roasted duck.)We also are thankful to Yvette Stinehart (James, cello) who met us at the hotel in Shanghai with 5,000 concert programs that she had arranged to print for us.
Yvette never stopped helping the whole time we were in Shanghai. She brought us herbal medicine to prevent heat stroke, took the parents on a fabulous tour, complete with hairdos and massages, arranged for a tailor to come to the hotel and take measurements and orders for suits and clothing, invited fourteen young musicians to join our orchestra for the Chinese folk songs we performed at the Shanghai Concert Hall, and was just on top of every aspect of our time in Shanghai!!!
In Seoul, Mee Kim (Maria, harp, and Michael, bass, MYA Alums) made all the arrangements for our concert in the Seoul Arts Center. A packed hall filled the 2500 seats, an audience Dr. D was told was nearly twice the normal size for concerts in this beautiful hall. Mee, an MYA Board member, put MYA’s philosophy of making classical and jazz music accessible to as many people as possible into action. She gave tickets to many people who do not normally have the opportunity to attend a concert in the Seoul Arts Center who enjoyed Copland, Tchaikovsky, and the best of our jazz tunes. It was such a high finale to perform at SAC!
Mee Kim also arranged for us to tour the Kim Koo Museum which opened in 2002 to recognize and honor the work of her grandfather as an educator and leader of Korea when its provisional government was in Shanghai while Korea was occupied by Japan, and his return to Korea after the Japanese surrendered in WW II before he was assassinated in 1949. After the tour, we were all treated at the museum to the best buffet we had had yet on the tour, complete with unlimited, fabulous ice cream. We all thought Binggrae should start marketing this ice cream in the States. As long as we’re talking food, you should have seen the lobby of the hotel when Keunsup Shin’s (viola) grandmother had 30 pizzas, sandwiches, coke, sprite and water delivered to the hotel (from Papa John’s, no less!) You never saw so many happy, excited faces!
Finally, you have no idea how proud we were of the music directors and leaders on this tour! I really think that of all the concerts I’ve seen Dr. D conduct over our last 35 years together, his conducting at the National Library in Beijing was the best yet! Audiences in China are less sophisticated than in the States because classical music is not part of their tradition, yet our students under his direction had the audience engaged throughout the all-classical program. The next evening, Nic Meyer and the Big Band had the audience on fire at a concert for young children in Tian Jian, a city two hours from Beijing.
To hear the band and see how our students have developed under his and Bruce Daughterty’s leadership and direction brought tears even from me, especially I watched a young Chinese student just naturally dancing to the music the whole time. It was so special. John Fatum’s drum solos in Sing Sing Sing were outstanding, and he knew, and the band knew, he had nailed them. They had to be so proud of their performance!We can’t tell you how appreciative we are for the opportunities so many have given our MYA students and us! We hope you will come to the concert at Millenium Park on Monday, August 13, at 6:30 p.m. We are so happy the City of Chicago will host this final performance at Pritzker Pavilion, and appreciate the help of Stephen Fatum (Michael, trumpet, and John, percussion) and Susan Cook, our Marketing and Communications Director, who have been working very hard while we were gone to coordinate all the arrangements.
Karen Dennis
