From Europe to Australia, South America to Asia, we have arranged
performance tours to dozens of countries throughout the world.
Click on a link below to read an
article regarding a sampling of our 2007 tours. Or you can download
the 2006-2007 issue of “Tour Notes” in
Acrobat PDF format with 12 pages of tour stories or any of our
previous years’ issues.
 |
If needed, download a free copy of Acrobat Reader |
| |
|
Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church Choir's Life-changing Tour of South Africa
By Amanda Bauman, ACFEA Tour Manager
 When I began working with Tour Manager Dianne Giombetti and Director Jeff Brillhart on the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church Choir’s 2007 tour of South Africa, none of us had any idea how profoundly we would be changed by the end of the tour. It is impossible to put into words the life-changing effect that visiting this country has had on not only the tour members, but also those of us at ACFEA who were involved in the project. We all approached the venture with curiosity, excitement and eagerness, and it wasn't long before contacts and choirs from all over South Africa were extending invitations for joint concerts, service participations, shared meals and workshops.
After a long but very comfortable plane ride, it was finally time to embark on this odyssey, which began in Johannesburg. Having twice before seen the gritty, chaotic and brilliantly lively city on inspection tours, I was eager to learn the group’s impressions of South Africa’s largest city. Tour member Tim Starn noted: “As we drive in toward town, there are shanties here and there. They look foreign, juxtaposed as they are against the businesses, homes, and modern highways. People are collecting scraps of wood for heat. One man was sitting next to a burning stump for warmth.” This mix of primitive and modern is a startling image for many visitors to Africa. BMPC embraced the experience fully as the residents of these informal settlements became our friends, colleagues and singing partners over the course of the tour, and were warm, enthusiastic and inviting throughout.
 While in Johannesburg, the group performed a joint concert with the Chamber Choir of South Africa in Kwa Thema, one of the city’s many townships. When the church was at capacity, the host choir stood up in their seats among the audience and started singing a Zulu song. The entire audience of 400 people stood and joined in, singing in perfect harmony in as many parts as there were people. No one will forget the emotion and energy that spread around that church that evening. The pastor of the church welcomed BMPC and said “Africans sing when they are hurting, they sing when they feel joy, they sing to have direct contact with the heart.” This theme was prevalent throughout the concert, which ended with both choirs singing Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.
After some down time on safari in Pilanesburg, we flew to the Garden Route where the group was scheduled to participate in the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. The concert on July 4 was a sell-out, with the Premiere of the Eastern Cape Province and the American Consul General in attendance. The concert was followed up by a two-night stay in the beautiful seaside village of Knysna, where the group sang during the opening night of the town’s Oyster Festival.
 The group completed its tour with a four-night stay in Cape Town, one of the world’s most stunning cities. While the city center is very well developed, the poverty in the surrounding areas is overwhelming, and again it was in the townships where the group decided to perform. Through the BMPC’s mission and outreach connections in the township of Gugulethu, we organized a Sunday service participation and an afternoon concert at JLZwane Church, a parish well known for its extensive HIV/AIDS outreach programs. The atmosphere was heavy with emotion, as Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church is one of JLZwane’s main sponsors. After the concert, members of the choir had the unique opportunity to visit some of JLZwane’s parishioners in their homes, all of which were one or two room shacks and headed by either orphans or HIV/AIDS patients. This was a very eye-opening experience indeed.
On the final night of the tour, the group traveled again to Gugulethu where our friends, Bongani Magatyana and Xolani May from JLZwane, had arranged a joint concert. BMPC was introduced by four choirs totaling more than 300 singers, and was applauded by hundreds more. The final piece, Soweto: June, 1976, by Paul Caldwell and Sean Ivory, was commissioned for the tour and sung with the Siyaya Choir of Gugulethu. It combines two songs of hope: the Zulu hymn Senzenina, from the Apartheid uprisings, and the American hymn We Shall Overcome, from the civil rights movement. The spirit of these two cultures singing this beautifully arranged piece about hope and peace was very poignant and there were more than a few teary eyes in the audience.
It was with a heavy heart that the group departed for home the next morning. The entire trip was far more than a concert tour - it was a journey. Anyone on this tour would say what makes South Africa great is not its beautiful vistas, its incredible food and wine, its magnificent beasts, it is its people: the open arms, the smiles, the respect, the belief in a better future and the undeniable sense of community and love. Jeff Brillhart perfectly sums up the tour by saying: “I believe I speak for everyone when I say that this trip has been an exhilarating, uplifting, and enormously moving experience.” Here, here!
Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra Completes Fifth ACFEA Tour
The Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra's fifth ACFEA tour included Poland (Warsaw, Krakow and Opole), Slovakia (Kosice) and Hungary (Debrecen and Budapest). We are very flattered that the RPYO has put its trust in us so many times, and the experience gained from previous tours made this one particularly successful. As conductor David Harman wrote:
"First of all, thanks! It was such a great tour in so many respects. The concert venues were all wonderful. It was such a pleasure to have really interesting and varied acoustical spaces for the orchestra to experience. It helps build our listening and performance skills as a group so much. The details in general seemed exceptionally well done this time around. I wanted to share my appreciation for a job superbly done. Thanks again so much for all that you provided for us."
The orchestra members enjoyed playing in concert halls in Opole, Kosice and Debrecen, with a program that included works by Bernstein and Barber, Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, Dvorak’s Carnival Overture and, in Opole, a movement from Gorécki’s Symphony No. 3 with a Polish soprano soloist. The tour began and ended with a day of fun and sightseeing in two great capital cities: Warsaw and Budapest.
For many in the group, the most memorable event was their visit to Auschwitz. The group had prepared carefully for this harrowing experience, with a series of classes explaining the historical context and contemporary relevance. As one thoughtful tour participant wrote:
"I wish we had played Gorécki after going to Auschwitz. It’s impossible to imagine the grief of the families who didn't have a chance to grow up and grow old together. That piece gives a tiny glimpse into the sorrow and wrenching pain of waiting for something that might not be there, but also the glimmer of hope that won’t leave – can’t leave. It’s in human nature to hope."
ACFEA believes that a tour can offer so much more than performance opportunities, and when an organization like the RPYO shares that belief, memorable and life-changing experiences are possible.
Touring with a Social Mission
The power of music to effect social change and to bolster sagging spirits has long been known: think of spirituals in the time of slavery, the protest songs of the 1960s or the singing of deeply symbolic traditional songs in Estonia during the Soviet occupation.
Many groups make this power an implicit part of their tour goals: merely by traveling and singing they will broaden their understanding of the world, bring joy to their audiences and, perhaps, introduce choirs and orchestras to some excellent North American repertoire. Other groups have an explicitly philanthropic goal for their tour: they request that their concerts be fund-raisers for a local charity or cause, they raise money before the tour to donate to organizations that they will meet while traveling (Houston’s First Presbyterian Church and the San Francisco area’s Tapestry are good examples of this), or they ask to sing in an orphanage, hospice or retirement home.
ACFEA is fundamentally committed to helping our groups define and achieve such important social goals, and is pleased to have worked with several groups in the last 12 months that have shared this commitment. Examples include Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church Choir, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles and the Glen Ellyn Children’s Chorus.
Of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles’s tour of South America, participant Donnie Garner wrote, "Thank you, once again, for everything you do for the tours with the chorus. It is with the help of people like the ACFEA staff that we can change the world, one step at a time, through music and open-minded acceptance as well, to make it a better place for everyone!"
Emily Ellsworth, Artistic Director of the Glenn Ellyn Children’s Chorus, wrote of their tour of South Africa, "This was certainly the most holistic tour we’ve had, with the music, the sights and the humanitarian aspects absolutely feeding one another."
The Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, on their third tour with ACFEA, visited Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil in September, 2006. Beyond the normal musical goals, their social goals were to promote human rights, support people with AIDS and those caring for them, and to show that being gay is perfectly normal – and certainly nothing to hide. In every city, the presence of 150 openly gay men attracted exactly the right sort of publicity for their mission, with thoughtful interviews with the press, television and radio, and television appearances that highlighted the group’s musical excellence – including a live performance on Santiago’s Catholic television channel!
 Large audiences everywhere were deeply impressed by the group’s musical and dramatic talents, and GMCLA was delighted to see that at least as many straight people attended the concerts as gays, bringing the two communities together in a way that was unprecedented in some places. Every bit as important to GMCLA, however, were the opportunities for small groups to visit AIDS wards and hospices, to meet the patients and to sing for them.
The world can, indeed, be changed, one step at a time, whether individually or through a television audience of millions, by groups as committed to their mission as the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles.
The Glen Ellyn Children’s Chorus, having previously visited Australia and Brazil with ACFEA, spent nearly two weeks in South Africa. From the first evening of the tour, when the restaurant staff joined in the singing and dancing as the chorus sang traditional Zulu and Xhosa songs, it was all about connecting. There were four formal concerts, all shared with a wide range of local choirs, and many opportunities to sing informally with people and groups they encountered along the way.
This tour had a strongly philanthropic purpose to it from the beginning, and there were many opportunities to help local communities. The concert in Pretoria was a benefit for the Mohau Centre children’s home and for the South African equivalent of the Make a Wish Foundation; they sang at the Nazareth House hospice in Cape Town and made a donation from chorus funds; and they visited a school in Masiphumelele and donated huge quantities of sports and art equipment, paid for with funds raised by the individual Glen Ellyn choristers: a remarkable commitment by these teenagers to people on the other side of the world with so much less than they have.
To quote Emily Ellsworth again: "How could we not sing the African repertoire from our hearts after seeing the Apartheid Museum, taking a tour of Soweto with our very proud local guide, and playing with the Mohau Centre children?"
University of Delaware Chorale Wins 2007 Tallinn International Choir Festival
By Ryan Tibbetts, University of Delaware Tour Manager
On April 14, 2007, the University of Delaware Chorale departed for a ten-day tour of Sweden, Finland and Estonia. The Chorale, under the direction of Dr. Paul Head, had been accepted for participation in the Tallinn 2007 International Choir Festival, an international competition sponsored by the Estonian Choral Association, where it would compete against choirs from the Baltics and beyond. The concert tour represented the culmination of nearly a year and a half of planning and months of rehearsals and performances to prepare the ensemble to compete.
Upon arriving in Helsinki, the group took a brief tour of the city followed by an informal concert in the Rock Church. After that, another flight and a bus ride took them to the Swedish city of Lund, where the Chorale spent a few days singing with and for students and singers in Lund and the nearby city of Kristianstad. After two informal performances at an area public school, the choir returned to Lund for a joint concert with the Lund University Academic Choir. The next day the choir had an exchange with the students from a performing arts high school in Lund, and an evening concert with the Kristianstad Motet Choir. The students then returned to Helsinki for a formal concert in the city’s Lutheran cathedral before departing by jetfoil for Tallinn.
The Tallinn festival consisted of six categories of competition. The Chorale participated in three categories – Mixed Choirs, Renaissance and Baroque, and Contemporary Music, each requiring a separate program. In addition, the competition concluded with a Grand Prix round, where the top six choirs would perform 15-minute programs of music they had not sung in the earlier rounds. Beginning with the opening concert, the Chorale drew enthusiastic responses from both the audience and the judging panel. In the end, the University of Delaware Chorale took second place in all three categories in which they had performed and went on to win the Grand Prix, becoming the first American choir in over ten years to be awarded the overall championship.
While winning the competition was certainly exciting and a remarkable event for everyone involved, members of the Chorale could cite many other great experiences on the trip: an emotional impromptu performance in the Lund cathedral; the chance to meet and sing with other students and musicians from all over the world; and, the incredible experience of focusing and refining their skill and sound as an ensemble beyond what they might have thought possible. For everyone involved, the tour was an unforgettable experience that shaped the way the students view choral singing and their individual and collective potentials, and provided them with memories to savor for the rest of their lives.
|
