OYO 1998 Tour to Mexico, Costa Rica and Cuba

Tour to Mexico, Costa Rica and Cuba

OYO oboist Jason Leith exchanges pointers
with his Cuban counterpart.
Photo: Howard Kirsch.

Friday June 19, 1998 Depart San Francisco - arrive San Jose, Costa Rica

Sunday, June 21 Arrive Coter Lake (Eco Lodge - sightseeing)

Joint concert with Costa Rica National Youth Orchestra-

Melico Salazar Teatro, San Jose

Thursday June 25 Toluca, Mexico

Concert at Sala Felipe Villanueva

Friday June 26 Taxco, Mexico

Concert at Santa Prisca Church

Saturday June 27 Cuernavaca, Mexico

Joint Concert with Cuernavaca Youth Orchestra at Cathedral

Sunday June 28 Mexico City, Mexico

Noon: Joint Concert with Blas Galindo Youth Orchestra

Center for Performing Arts

5 PM: Brass Ensemble in Coyoacan Square

Monday June 29 Mexico City, Mexico

Radio Broadcast Concert in Studio

Thursday July 2 Havana, Cuba

Joint Concert with Amadeo Roldan Youth Orchestra in Teatro Garcia Lorca

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Thanks to ACFEA Tour Consultants (www.acfea.com) who have graciously allowed us to reprint this lively article from Tour Notes.

CUBA INVITES AND ENTICES THE OAKLAND YOUTH ORCHESTRA

It is hard to imagine that the Oakland (CA) Youth Orchestra (conductor, Michael Morgan) could surpass the incredible rewards that came from selecting the rather unusual destination of Latin America for their 1998 concert tour. Costa Rica and Mexico alone would have provided a full and wonderful range of musical exchange and cultural experience, but having the tour culminate in a three-day visit to Havana quite simply catapulted over the top the scope and dimension of the experiences.

No one would argue that the tremendous success of this tour was due to the talents, perseverance and hard work of many people - and the maintenance of the ever-important sense of humor! Narrowing down the multitude of performance options, sightseeing excursions and opportunities for cultural exchange proved to be the most difficult aspect of the planning. An important objective, which remained throughout the process, was to incorporate joint concerts with youth orchestras from each of the countries OYO visited. This was accomplished at the highest level, first with the Costa Rica Youth Symphony Orchestra in San Jose’s Melico Salazar Teatro, followed by a performance with the Mexico Youth Orchestra in the Blas Galindo Hall of Mexico City’s National Center of the Arts, and finally with the Amadeo Roldán Youth Orchestra at the Gran Teatro in Havana. These performances stand apart as highlights of the tour where not only music but also so much more was shared.

OYO also took advantage of several other unique opportunities in this region. Forming a small brass ensemble, they performed in the bandstand of Coyoacan Plaza where the Mexican tradition of friends and family strolling on Sunday afternoons is still strong. Just outside Mexico City, OYO was warmly hosted by families from the International Center for Language and Culture, which sponsored a performance at the beautiful Filipe Villanueva Teatro. And, in the impressive Cathedral of Cuernavaca, OYO joined with the young Cuernavaca Symphony Youth Orchestra to present another concert for a very large and appreciative audience.

Still there was time to explore the unique sites along the way. In Costa Rica, special accommodations were available at Eco Lodge, situated in the heart of a lush tropical rain forest. This offered the perfect vantage point to view the magnificent plant and animal life, as well as to visit the natural springs at Tabacon Spa, just at the foot of Arenal Volcano, which regularly performs its own evening light and fire show. OYO also enjoyed several aspects of Mexico’s rich history, including a visit to the Teotihuacan pyramids and glimpses into its colonial past as seen in Taxco’s extraordinary Santa Prisca Church, built by the wealth of its local silver mines.

The last leg of the tour, and its amazing highlight, took place in Cuba where, at the invitation of Havana’s Gran Teatro and with the blessing of the US Treasury Department, OYO performed an exhilarating program with the Amadeo Roldán Youth Orchestra to a sold-out crowd. Local promoters said this was the first American orchestra to play in Havana since the US embargo was imposed more than 30 years ago - and there was great anticipation for the visit from both sides. The incomparable thrill of this final performance was in contrast to the bittersweet delight of Old Havana itself: a magical port city with faded baroque buildings, 1950s-era automobiles, stately old churches, sidewalk cafes, and a rare atmosphere of quiet calm mixed with an infectious rhythmic street beat.

Certainly, OYO will never again take for granted the musical facilities and supplies so abundantly available here in comparison with Cuba, where such basic things as manuscript paper, music stands, and strings are so strikingly difficult to come by. Still, no one would ever claim this situation threatens the inherent musical nature of the Cubans. Nor will they ever forget their performance of Guanguanco, which featured among other things a dancing trumpet section and a span of concurrent but different syncopated rhythms beaten out by each of the string sections.

Michael Morgan conducting OYO in Cuba. photo by Mary Morris Lawrence.

Anna Cooper Essay

We’re all much better at Spanish for having toured in June as the Oakland Youth Orchestra through Costa Rica, Mexico, and Cuba. Violist Reggie Patterson, for example, took French in school but didn’t know a word of Spanish before the trip. Now he’s familiar with many words and phrases of the language of the three countries.

We’re also a better orchestra. After rehearsing and performing nearly every day for two weeks, after adjusting our sounds to each concert hall, after perfecting the pieces we played, we have become a cohesive unit made up of conductor, players, and administrators and contributors. But these things were expected, since they happen on most youth orchestra tours, and, furthermore, are insignificant compared to the depth of the experiences we had. As we were practicing our Spanish and growing as an orchestra, we were, often inadvertently, doing a much more powerful thing: we were knocking down barriers.

The first time we tread unbroken ground was on the day of the decision to tour in Latin America. This was near unprecedented; youth orchestras "almost always tour in Europe or Asia," according to conductor Michael Morgan. But we not only were going to an area of the world unfrequented by young musicians. We aspired to go to Cuba, an act normally prohibited by the U.S. government. From there on, the trip was a grand expedition on uncharted waters.

We all arrived in Costa Rica, our first stop, not knowing what to expect. The videos we had watched helped little. We didn’t know the first thing about the country. I remember that awestruck first bus ride to the school where we were to meet our host families – Coca-Cola signs, rain, excited anticipation. And then that moment of first contact with our host families. We were so ignorant

and so curious about each other. In the days that followed we got to know each other. We had never paid any attention to a small developing Central American country before. And they had seen the U.S. as an entity, not as a collective of individuals. They met a group of people with souls, and we found a nation with an intense and beautiful culture well worthy of our respect.

We had heard more about Mexico when we arrived there, if only from Dan Rather and Elaine Corral. We knew the country had economic and political troubles. We did not know, however, how much they respected art, how hospitable they were, or how much fun they were to dance with. We did not know how hard the children studied in school, or how they view the world, or the colossus that is Mexican history. We discovered all these things and more. As I sat conversing with my host family in Toluca eating "nopales" (fried cactus) we had a friendly conversation that is rare between our two groups of people.

Cuba remains the vastest uncharted sea of culture for the United States. The plane ride over the Caribbean Sea brought, to me, a new meaning of the word ignorance. I knew absolutely nothing about the country that has been so shunned by U.S. politicians for so long. I felt on our arrival that a huge stone wall had been knocked down, and we were permitted to look on that forbidden place that has been shielded from sight since before we were born. When I arrived in Cuba I didn’t see a country of "reds." I saw a group of people who had a mighty conviction, so powerful that they could live with it in their daily lives and even undergo considerable suffering (imposed by us!) for it. Exposure to Cuba did not make me agree with the principles of communism automatically, but it did make me challenge the principles of our own capitalism. For purposes of humanity that can only be good.

So really out of the tour we got a wider vision: we got to know our closest neighbors.

--Anna Cooper

Latin America Tour Journal

by Ian Jones, cellist in the Oakland Youth Orchestra

We were excited about the cross-cultural exchanges and concerts ahead in Costa Rica, Mexico and Cuba. On June 19, seventy musicians from the Oakland Youth Orchestra, under the direction of Maestro Michael Morgan, departed San Francisco airport at 4:30am for Costa Rica. I would like to write about some of our adventures in cultural exchange. We worked hard to prepare our music repertoire and learned a few Spanish words. We were looking forward to living with local families, "homestays," in both Costa Rica and Mexico. In Cuba we will stay in hotels.

Our Costa Rican homestay families greeted us with a formal reception in the rehearsal center for their national symphony and youth orchestras. Entrance into the youth program is competitive: about 4,000 musicians audition for 100 openings each year. Once admitted, however, students pay virtually nothing as the program is fully funded, mostly from public sources. The program is comprehensive: instruments and music are provided while training is given in orchestral and chamber music as well as in music theory. It seems to me that their students are lucky to have such a well-supported and well-organized music education.

My homestay family had five children. They were very friendly and generous. No matter how much they gave me, they always seemed to want to give more. Other OYO players said they had similar experiences in their homestays. This was especially true with food; they took me out to dinner every night.

Our first concert, which was in San José, the capital city of Costa Rica, went well. We were 150 musicians on stage for a joint appearance with the Orquesta Sinfonica Juvenil de Costa Rica. The Oakland Youth Orchestra began the concert with Brahms' “Symphony No. 1.” Then, the Costa Rican conductor, Marvin Araya, led the joint orchestra in Respighi's “Pines of Rome” and Maestro Morgan conducted Gershwin's “American in Paris.” We were seated "side by side" with the Costa Rican musicians. It was fun to make music together. Perhaps the most exciting thing about the concert was the size and the enthusiasm of the audience. The symphony hall was almost full even though a major soccer tournament was being played at the same time.

After the concert, we said good bye to our homestay families and took a 5-hour bus ride to Eco Lodge, a mountain resort advertised as "the best canopy adventure in the rain forest." We had the opportunity to experience the rain forest either by a hike or by a horseback ride. I myself went on a 2-hour hike. For me, the rainforest was kind of disappointing. Instead of being a tapestry of brilliant colors, the forest was overwhelmingly green. Moreover, I had always imagined that a rain forest would be full of all sorts of monkeys, parrots and other exotic birds, like in a zoo. On our hike, we saw one toucan and that was it. I learned that most animals hide during the day and usually come out at night.

My favorite activity in Costa Rica was an outing to Tabacon Resort, where there are hot springs and thermal baths naturally heated by the nearby Arenal volcano. We stayed in the hot springs for about four hours at the end of the afternoon; we swam, played cards and had fun. When it got dark, everyone started running around, pulling out binoculars and yelling in Spanish. Since my friends and I don't speak Spanish, we were wondering what was going on. We looked up at the volcano and even though we were about 2 miles away from the crater, we could see red and orange dots of lava making their way down the mountain. We realized that the volcano had been constantly erupting all day but the eruption was only visible at night. The Arenal volcano is quite active: six weeks ago, a large lava flow spilled down the volcano and stopped within 500 meters of the Tabacon

Resort.

The bus ride back to San José was long, but we stayed at a fancy hotel near the airport in order to catch a very early flight the next morning to Mexico. We are all looking forward to our next stops: Toluca, Cuernavaca and Mexico City.