-
July 13, 2006
Pennsylvania Academy of Music Students to Travel to China
Thirteen students from the Pennsylvania Academy of Music will travel to China August 15-29 to participate in a “Music Bridge to Tibet” summer music festival, a two week program in which they will study and perform classical music in Shanghai, Beijing, Lhasa, and Xining. They will also have an opportunity to travel in the new “Sky Train” from Xining to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. The Sky Train travels so high into the Himalayas (as high as 16,000 feet) that passenger cabins are pumped with oxygen and oxygen masks are available in every seat to combat altitude sickness.
The Academy contingent will join approximately 35 other students from China as part of the summer festival. The festival's mission is to “bridge nations through the international language of music” and to set up a “cultural exchange program between young musicians from both China and the United States.” The festival is coordinated by the China Zongheng Culture and Art Industry.
The students, all from the Lancaster region, are: violinists Gina DiCarlo, Katie O'Brien, and Adriana Socoski; violinist/violist Becca Rast; violist Leslie Hostetter; cellists Roni Lahr, Nathan Doan, and Meredith Bates; and pianists Ellie Caniglia, Sharon Ho, Christine Cooper, Stephanie Bova and Geoffrey Gao.
The students will spend two weeks visiting Shanghai, Tibet, Beijing and Xining where they will perform, participate in master classes, and attend concerts together.
Although the Academy has hosted several groups of Chinese students in the past (including a group of 14 attending this year's summer music festival, Music Naturally), this is the first year the Academy is sending students to China.
The trip includes a stop in Tibet, not a region traditionally associated with Western classical music. But Tibet is a very religious area filled with Buddhist temples and thus an important tourist destination. Xun Pan, an Academy pianist who has helped coordinate the trip, likens visiting the temples in Tibet to “visiting churches while touring Italy.”
While in China, students will also visit Tian-An-Men Square, the Shanghai Conservatory and the Great Wall of China.
Traveling with the students will be the Pennsylvania Academy of Music's Ensemble-in-Residence, the Newstead Trio. The Newstead Trio (Xun Pan, piano; Michael Jamanis, violin; Sara Male, cello) will perform as guest artists during the festival along with Kong Xiangdong of China, a Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition winner.
The Pennsylvania Academy of Music is a non-profit pre-collegiate institution dedicated to the musical advancement of its students. Founded in 1990, the Academy attracts students from an immediate nine-county area as well as from around the world, who study disciplines ranging from instrumental, chamber music, orchestra, opera and vocal performance to music composition and theory, improvisation, accompanying ,jazz and recording. The Academy has a widely accomplished international faculty and is one of only 12 autonomous pre-collegiate music schools in the country accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music.
