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December <strong>2018</strong>, Volume 2, Issue 4<br />
September 2017, Volume 1, Issue 3<br />
CELEBRATING LIVES ACROSS THE FAWCO WORLD<br />
1
INSPIRATION IN THIS ISSUE<br />
An Introduction to Our <strong>Women</strong> in Music 4<br />
England: A Lover of Mozart ! 5<br />
Germany: Music for Children 8<br />
Switzerland: Reviving Peggy Lee’s Songs? 12<br />
Germany: In the Piano Zone 17<br />
USA: 40 Years At The Opera! 24<br />
Norway: A Note From Oslo via Hawaii 28<br />
Austria: Singing For the Lord 32<br />
Switzerland: A Life of Jazz 35<br />
Germany: A Musical Teacher 37<br />
Spain: The “Singing Housing Specialist” 41<br />
USA: Dreaming of Accordions 44<br />
Germany: Musical Theater Brought to Life 51<br />
Belgium: Regular Season Tickets 55<br />
France: Vocal Jazz Parisian Style 58<br />
Germany: Life As a Viola Player 62<br />
Luxembourg: Bringing Joy Through Singing 65<br />
Switzerland: In the Opera Chorus 67<br />
OUR FEATURES<br />
Around The FAWCO World In 62 Images 11<br />
What to look for in an Expat Tax Preparer 16<br />
A Club Inspires: AWC Gothenburg 21<br />
Just For Fun 1 31<br />
A Letter to My Master Teacher 48<br />
Just For Fun 2 61<br />
IN EVERY ISSUE<br />
Inspiration From the Editor 3<br />
From The Cover Coordinator 3<br />
<strong>Inspiring</strong> You 70<br />
Magazine Feedback 70<br />
More About This Issue 71<br />
Coming Next Spring 72<br />
Janet Darrow p. 10<br />
Esquire Group p. 16<br />
ADVERTISERS’ INDEX<br />
London & Capital p. 27<br />
The Pajama Company p. 30<br />
Want to take your business worldwide? Consider advertising in <strong>Inspiring</strong><br />
<strong>Women</strong>. Contact Elsie Bose at advertising@fawco.org to get started.<br />
FAWCO would like to thank Esquire Group, our Premier Sponsor, for<br />
underwriting <strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong>. In this issue we have an interesting<br />
column on page 16, written by Esquire Group’s president,<br />
Jimmy Sexton.<br />
2
Inspiration From the Editor<br />
So here we are<br />
almost at the end of<br />
another packed<br />
FAWCO year! Time<br />
has certainly flown<br />
again in <strong>2018</strong>; I<br />
hope it’s been a<br />
good year for you.<br />
This issue of <strong>Inspiring</strong><br />
<strong>Women</strong> is filled with<br />
musical notes. We<br />
have the written<br />
musical stories of<br />
the profilees for you to read, but we are thrilled<br />
to be able to offer you the chance to hear<br />
their actual music, too. Just click the button to<br />
hear them perform!<br />
We also have one profilee whose inclusion<br />
may puzzle you. So why in a magazine called<br />
<strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong> do we have a male musician<br />
profiled? Today Rick is the 1st VP of FAUSA<br />
(FAWCO’s sister organization in the US), but he<br />
first got involved when his husband got<br />
transferred to Switzerland. Rick persuaded the<br />
ladies of AWC Zurich to change their rules, he<br />
joined them, and the rest is history.<br />
the bus’ during the pre-Mumbai conference<br />
tour we did in India in 2016! He is incredibly<br />
musical, so I felt this was a great chance for<br />
you all to get to know him. He is certainly<br />
inspiring and works hard within the FAWCO<br />
world, too.<br />
I encourage you to send in your photos for our<br />
FAWCO 62 collection. We really would like to<br />
feature every single FAWCO club but can only<br />
do it with your help. Turn to p.11 for the details.<br />
All that remains now is for me to wish you all<br />
happy holidays and tell you how much I am<br />
looking forward to seeing many of you at the<br />
conference in Edinburgh in March.<br />
Best wishes, Liz x<br />
Liz MacNiven,<br />
inspiringwomen.editor@fawco.org<br />
I first met Rick at the Frankfurt IM where he was<br />
Mr. Video for the conference and then some<br />
of us got to know him better in ‘the back of<br />
From The Cover Coordinator<br />
The cover photo for this issue is an image of Christine Federspiel-Huvos<br />
who is a singer and member of AWC Zurich, Switzerland. She attracts<br />
diverse audiences with her original interpretation of French chansons,<br />
American musicals, jazz and blues. The cover shows her in Zürich during<br />
her last gala concert which benefitted the Lebensfreude Foundation.<br />
If you have a photo that you would like to see on a future cover of<br />
<strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong>, you can reach me, Marie-Bénédicte Luxem, at<br />
inspiringwomen.cover@fawco.org. There are full details of photo<br />
requirements on page 72 of this magazine. Please note: we can only<br />
accept portrait orientation images.<br />
3
“Music does a lot of things for a lot of people. It's transporting, for sure. It<br />
can take you right back, years back, to the very moment certain things<br />
happened in your life. It's uplifting, it's encouraging, it's strengthening.”<br />
Aretha Franklin<br />
Music has its own language of symbols and numbers. A piece of music<br />
achieves greatness when it disrupts time. Who are those that dare to<br />
create the language, the sound, the movement that enters the most<br />
private parts of an individual’s soul? Is music their passion or salvation?<br />
They say those with musical talent have a gift - how did they receive it?<br />
The people profiled in this issue have astonishing talent; they share with us<br />
their stories of how they came to music (or how it came to them). How<br />
do they find the balance between containing and controlling their talent<br />
and stoking the fire of creativity to achieve artistic success? Some of our<br />
profilees have chosen to guide others in maximizing their musical abilities;<br />
they share with us their stories of what musical success means to them.<br />
This issue also includes our first profilee for whom the “<strong>Inspiring</strong>” in our<br />
magazine’s title could be considered a verb and not an adjective…we<br />
are so excited to be able to include this person!<br />
And if that isn’t enough, for your enjoyment we have added SOUND as a<br />
new element to your online experience! Just look for the boxes, click and<br />
enjoy as our profilees perform their music!<br />
Finally, I wish all of you a very happy holiday<br />
season!<br />
Elsie Bose<br />
4
England: A Lover of Mozart!<br />
ROBIN SMIRNOV<br />
Chilterns American <strong>Women</strong>’s Club<br />
International, England<br />
From: Little Meadows, Pennsylvania<br />
Lives: Amersham, Buckinghamshire, UK<br />
love affair with performing.<br />
I grew up in Little Meadows, Pennsylvania, which is a<br />
beautiful, very rural area, and my family can’t seem<br />
to remember a time when I wasn’t singing<br />
constantly! I was in my first opera when I was just four<br />
years old. I was a gorgeous little gingerbread cookie<br />
in the children’s chorus of Hansel and Gretel. I loved<br />
everything about it – the hair, makeup, costumes,<br />
music, the lights, the stage! It was the start of my<br />
I sang and performed my entire way through school and went to university at Westminster Choir<br />
College, a world renowned music conservatory in Princeton, NJ. I was surrounded by some of<br />
the most talented and inspirational students and faculty in the world, and here developed my<br />
love and understanding of everything to do with music, singing and performing. In addition to<br />
performing in many operas and song recitals, our university choir regularly went on tour and<br />
recorded albums. We performed many times a year with the NY Philharmonic, Philadelphia<br />
Orchestra and the NJ Symphony at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, etc. under the batons of<br />
some of the world’s most respected conductors.<br />
These experiences completely shaped my<br />
musical life and gave me the most wonderful<br />
artistic foundation that I will carry forever.<br />
Between my 3 rd and 4 th years of university I had<br />
the privilege to live in London for a year and it<br />
was love at first sight! I decided to do my<br />
masters degree at the Royal Academy of Music<br />
in London. My time at the Royal Academy was<br />
absolutely magical and I specialized in art song<br />
and languages. I completely fell in love with the<br />
beauty of the melodies and poetry in French<br />
and German songs. I loved performing song<br />
recitals and oratorios and sang in my last opera<br />
as the High Priestess in Aida when I was six<br />
months pregnant with my daughter. I am a busy<br />
single mom to Violetta and Viktor and I love to<br />
sing for local charity galas and events, and the<br />
parent/teacher choirs at my children’s schools.<br />
My greatest joy is sharing music with my children<br />
and passing on my love and knowledge of<br />
music to them. Our house is always full of music<br />
that we are either making or listening to (singing,<br />
5
piano, violin, trumpet and guitar) and<br />
I hope I can help my children to<br />
develop their musical interests so that<br />
they can carry it with them for the<br />
rest of their lives! Music is the gift that<br />
keeps on giving!<br />
My earliest musical influence was my<br />
music teacher at school, Susan Lewis.<br />
She is one of the most special people<br />
that I have ever met and remains my<br />
dear friend to this day. She was the<br />
most amazing teacher and support!<br />
At Westminster Choir College, I had<br />
the pleasure of singing under Joseph<br />
Flummerfelt who makes magic<br />
happen with his conducting. He has<br />
a very special, soft artistry that brings the most beautiful sounds and musical moments out of his<br />
singers. The lessons he taught me about music while singing in his choir are endless.<br />
My relationship with music is ever-changing and<br />
evolving as I journey through life... I will always<br />
have my favourite memories and pieces of<br />
music but, there is always room for more. I have<br />
discovered that I can’t live without music and<br />
that singing makes my heart happy. And<br />
listening and watching my children sing and<br />
perform music is my favourite thing in the entire<br />
world. Music transcends our differences and<br />
brings us together.<br />
I would like to think that I have brought joy to<br />
many people through my singing. Whether it be<br />
in a concert hall or at a wedding or funeral, I<br />
hope that I have touched the hearts of those<br />
listening. That makes me proud.<br />
When I am listening to music I feel it is pure<br />
happiness and when I am performing, it is the<br />
most wonderful feeling of excitement mixed<br />
with a bit of worry that everything will go as it is<br />
supposed to! But, when I see that the audience<br />
is feeling comfortable and enjoying themselves,<br />
I can relax into my performance. And the<br />
applause? That feeling is indescribable….<br />
Pieces of music I recommend/love<br />
Strauss’s Four Last Songs for their divine<br />
beauty of music and poetry.<br />
Brahm’s Requiem for the stunning melodies and memories that I have of singing it.<br />
Everything musical theatre for the joy and happiness that it brings, especially my favourite<br />
Les Miserables.<br />
The “Intermezzo” from Cavalleria Rusticana because it pulls at my heart strings!<br />
And anything that my daughter sings while accompanying herself on the piano.... that is<br />
my very favourite. Sheer bliss!<br />
6
GETTING TO KNOW ROBIN<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself<br />
that not many people know. I have a secret<br />
love of pop music, thanks to my daughter!<br />
If you could perform with, or meet, one<br />
musician/group of musicians, dead or alive,<br />
who would it/they be and what music would<br />
you like to play and why? Mozart, Mozart,<br />
Mozart! I would love to be surrounded with<br />
his genius even for a moment. I would sing<br />
Mozart’s famous aria “Porgi Amor” from his<br />
opera The Marriage of Figaro and he would<br />
accompany me. OMG!!<br />
What are some of the things you would love to<br />
get better at and things you would like to stop<br />
doing? I would love to play the piano and<br />
tennis better and I would like to stop being so<br />
busy. I would like more moments to just be.<br />
Complete this sentence: The most unusual<br />
place I have performed or listened to music<br />
was… the most unusual (and my favourite)<br />
place that I have performed was a little town<br />
square on a mountain in the Cinque Terre<br />
region in Italy. Overlooking the sea and the<br />
mountains, it was simply the most beautiful<br />
place to sing.<br />
If we looked in your purse/wallet/pocket what<br />
three things would we find that would tell us<br />
something about you? Lots of different pink<br />
lipstick, my very full diary and my sunglasses.<br />
“Being a<br />
musician, it’s my<br />
job to be real<br />
and true to<br />
whoever I am.<br />
Hopefully that<br />
will inspire other<br />
people. I hope<br />
it inspires<br />
people to be<br />
themselves and<br />
be comfortable<br />
in their own<br />
skin.” – YUNA<br />
7
Germany: Music for Children<br />
MIEKE STOEL<br />
Augsburg International <strong>Women</strong>’s Association<br />
From: Amsterdam, Netherlands<br />
Lives: Augsburg, Germany<br />
I was born in Amsterdam and grew up in the east of<br />
Holland. My mother was a good amateur pianist and<br />
accompanied my sister and me when singing children’s<br />
songs. So I guess I could sing before I could speak. I had<br />
my first piano lessons at age nine. I got to know a lot of<br />
piano repertoire through my mother, who played many<br />
of the great Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and<br />
Debussy pieces.<br />
After finishing school, I started to study piano, chamber<br />
music and vocal accompaniment in Holland and<br />
attended master classes in England.<br />
I left Holland at age 27 to live and work in Vienna.<br />
Meanwhile, I had specialized in the field of physical<br />
Photographer: Ran Keren<br />
problems and worked as a music physiology teacher at<br />
the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna from<br />
1985-2014. One of the most important methods I had been trained in was the Feldenkrais<br />
method – “awareness through movement.” Not only did the Feldenkrais method offer the ideal<br />
tools to help music students prevent injuries, it also meant a real breakthrough for my personal<br />
pianistic development. I travelled throughout Europe, the United States and Asian countries<br />
giving concerts, lectures and workshops. Since autumn 2014 I have lived in Augsburg, Germany<br />
with my second husband, the cellist Hartmut Tröndle. I work freelance, giving concerts with<br />
various chamber music groups and singers as well as teaching.<br />
Today I am preparing for concerts<br />
with my piano quartet “SuedamA”<br />
and will start a new project this winter<br />
with children’s concerts. I have a<br />
dream to open the road to music for<br />
children through small concerts in a<br />
familiar atmosphere, accompanied<br />
by storytelling and projecting<br />
illustrations from old fairy-tale books.<br />
At the same time as working on the<br />
children’s concerts, I work for “Live<br />
Music Now,” a foundation initiated<br />
by Lord Yehudi Menuhin. The idea is<br />
that hand-picked young musicians<br />
go to play for people who can’t get<br />
to any live concerts by themselves.<br />
8
I credit my parents for giving me the chance to get in touch with great classical music at a very<br />
early age. They took me to concerts, and there was also a lot of active music making in our<br />
home. My mother played the piano, my father the flute and the cello. At age eight, I got to<br />
know Schubert’s <strong>Winter</strong>reise, a piece of music that touched me deeply and had a great<br />
influence in my musical development. Later, teachers, musical partners, concerts and CDs<br />
became the sources of inspiration.<br />
Through music I have gotten to know wonderful people and formed great friendships that have<br />
lasted a lifetime (I am 61 now).<br />
I think that to live with the masterpieces of art, to dive deeply into the spirit of the genius<br />
composers, who – in my opinion– have given a heavenly message to mankind, is an<br />
incomparable gift that I’m grateful for every day.<br />
Even later in life, I have discovered that with a deep<br />
commitment to music, one can still have great breakthroughs.<br />
It’s amazing. As a musician, I am grateful for every little step<br />
forward I am able to take. I rarely allow myself the opportunity<br />
to stand still and enjoy a success or spend time looking<br />
backward. When I am listening to music, my feelings vary from<br />
boredom to anger to absolute admiration, joy and deep<br />
attachment. Then while I am performing, my feelings vary from<br />
anxiety, insecurity, and despair to joy, conviction, devotion,<br />
happiness and euphoria.<br />
GETTING TO KNOW MIEKE<br />
If you could perform with, or meet, one<br />
musician/group of musicians, dead or alive,<br />
who would it/they be and what music would<br />
you like to play and why?<br />
I would love to meet Johannes Brahms and<br />
walk with him around the Altausseer See in the<br />
Austrian Salzkammergut.<br />
Complete this sentence: The most unusual<br />
place I have performed or listened to music<br />
was… What was good and/or less good about<br />
it as a venue? ….an open air concert during<br />
the solar eclipse in the Austrian mountains. We<br />
performed a symphonic poem by Liszt. It got<br />
dark, the birds stopped singing. It was magical.<br />
What are some of the things you would love to<br />
get better at and things you would like to stop<br />
doing? I would love to improve in everything<br />
that means something to me (cooking,<br />
gardening, being a good wife, a good<br />
daughter or a good grandmother, a devoted<br />
friend and a trillion other things) and to stop<br />
wasting time.<br />
9<br />
Photographer Christina Bleier
10
The world can seem like a very big place but for FAWCO women it is represented<br />
by 62 different cities or areas. We would like to collect a photo, taken by you,<br />
which in your mind best depicts the city or area you live in. It can be a place, a<br />
landscape, a person, a cultural highlight, a culinary speciality, but most importantly<br />
when you see it, it evokes your home away from home.<br />
The <strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong> team is creating a special photographic collection of images<br />
of our 62 FAWCO clubs, each image representing the diversity of our geographical<br />
homes. The collection will be used in the IW magazine and, we hope, exhibited in<br />
Edinburgh during our next FAWCO international conference.<br />
So all you need to do is send in<br />
your good quality JPEG images.<br />
Please feel free to add some<br />
creativity, your own artistic and<br />
personal touch. Images can be<br />
color or black & white and we<br />
need them no later than<br />
December 31 st , <strong>2018</strong>. Send to<br />
Marie-Bénédicte Luxem at<br />
inspiringwomen.cover@fawco.org<br />
11
Switzerland: Reviving Peggy Lee’s Songs?<br />
CHRISTINE HUVOS-FEDERSPIEL<br />
American <strong>Women</strong>’s Club of Zurich, Switzerland<br />
From: Rochester, Minnesota<br />
Lives: Zurich, Switzerland<br />
I was born in Rochester, Minnesota, on November 30,<br />
1957. My father had gotten his first really big job there as<br />
a construction engineer, after having obtained his<br />
degree from Columbia University, and contributed to<br />
building IBM’s “Big Blue” in Rochester, Minnesota. My<br />
parents, both originally Austro-Hungarians, were so happy<br />
to have been welcomed by the Land of the Free after<br />
difficult times on the Old Continent. They wanted both<br />
their children to be Americans; however, soon after my<br />
birth, my father was offered a job by IBM in Vienna,<br />
Austria, where my brother was born.<br />
In the early sixties, my father was moved to Paris which is<br />
where we spent our childhood, enjoying every minute of<br />
it. Paris in the sixties was very glamourous and it was also<br />
the city of French chansons. That is how I began to sing Edith Piaf, Yves Montand, Gilbert<br />
Bécaud, Barbara…relentlessly… in our living room! This did not stop me from learning all the songs<br />
from My Fair Ladys, among other musicals. I knew them all by heart by the time I was ten.<br />
In the early 70s we moved back to Vienna where my brother and I attended the Lycée Français<br />
de Vienne, thereby not losing our French. It was during these years that I discovered my passion<br />
for opera and started to train as an opera singer, taking lessons from the same teacher as Edita<br />
Gruberova. Nonetheless, I was told by an opera singer that my voice was simply not “strong”<br />
enough to sing at the Vienna State Opera. This was a huge disappointment for me, and after<br />
that, I decided to forget about music and dedicate my energy to other things… or so I thought!<br />
Once I left home, I studied in<br />
Paris and got training as a<br />
singer from a Parisian voice<br />
coach who had been<br />
recommended to me by some<br />
of my Viennese friends.<br />
However, at this stage, I was<br />
no longer interested in<br />
becoming an opera singer; I<br />
wanted to sing French<br />
chansons – and so I did!<br />
After my studies, I ended up<br />
working as an ESL and German<br />
teacher at the American<br />
International School in Vienna,<br />
but I never stopped singing in<br />
12
my spare time. I performed several times on Austrian<br />
television in the late 80s and early 90s, including singing<br />
French and German ballads that I had composed and<br />
written together with my mother.<br />
After my divorce from my high school sweetheart in<br />
1999, I obtained my TESL Certificate (Teaching English as<br />
a Second Language), and moved on to teach French<br />
and German in Kuwait, Frankfurt and finally in Zurich.<br />
I met my husband, Dr. med. Urs Federspiel, in Zurich, at<br />
the movies! Urs heard me sing at a charity concert for<br />
the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund a few months later<br />
at a café. After that, our fate was happily sealed. Since<br />
our marriage in 2006, I have been working for my<br />
husband’s medical practice as a secretary. But I never<br />
stopped singing and have recorded four albums (in a<br />
private capacity) in the past twelve years, thanks to my<br />
husband’s support. Last year, on the occasion of my Big<br />
Birthday, I sang with Pepe Lienhard’s Big Band at the<br />
Volkshaus in Zurich. We had a full house with over 1,000<br />
attendees and all proceeds went to the charity<br />
LEBENSFREUDE.<br />
I am presently working on the completion of two bilingual song albums (French/English) in which<br />
I cover songs of well-known artists, as well as some of my own pieces. I would like to continue<br />
working on projects together with big bands like Pepe Lienhard’s Big Band in Switzerland and in<br />
the US as well as continuing to write my own songs, and exploring new musical directions. I find<br />
that particularly exciting and enriching! I particularly love working on projects that combine<br />
different musical styles, for instance classical music and rock – like Freddy Mercury did with<br />
Montserrat Caballé when they sang Barcelona. In addition, I have accepted several offers to<br />
perform for audiences in local hotels and museums in Zurich this year and in 2019. In other<br />
words, it doesn’t have to be the Volkshaus every night…<br />
I think that being able to make people happy by singing for them is a very special gift, and I am<br />
very grateful for it. So, as long as I can, I will sing. But at the risk of sounding naïve, I have been<br />
surprised by the competitiveness and the harshness of the world of music and have never quite<br />
gotten used to it. That is why I gave up my dreams of becoming a “star” quite early in life. The<br />
price was simply too high…<br />
13<br />
But there is not just one<br />
world of music, and that is<br />
what I thrive on; making<br />
people happy by singing<br />
for them is my world of<br />
music! Music has saved me<br />
from depression and<br />
sadness throughout my life.<br />
Concerts for smaller and<br />
larger audiences have<br />
proven to be some of the<br />
most rewarding<br />
experiences in my life. It is a<br />
wonderful feeling to give so<br />
much pleasure to your<br />
audience simply by singing
14<br />
a beautiful tune with passion and<br />
exactitude! I love the reactions I<br />
get when I sing. More<br />
importantly, I love discovering<br />
new kinds of music and new<br />
artists in every field. It is a<br />
wonderful and rewarding<br />
adventure every time…<br />
The benefits of this great passion<br />
of mine have been more than<br />
positive: I generally sing for good<br />
causes, and have also<br />
successfully gotten my friends<br />
involved in theater and music by<br />
founding amateur theatrical<br />
groups at the schools where I<br />
have taught, and within the<br />
international clubs I have been<br />
involved in. I believe my strength lies in my musicality and my ability to mix styles and perform in<br />
different languages; these have given me the chance to create entirely new versions of “oldies.”<br />
And, although I am well aware of the fact that I am no longer “young,” I feel young at heart and<br />
believe I still have a long way to go when it comes to my creativity!<br />
When I listen to my favorite music, I disappear into a world of my own. I can cry to the sound of<br />
blues – a song can indeed make you feel your vulnerable spots - but I also find myself singing<br />
along to my favorite chansons. I can also voice and vent my feelings of disappointment with<br />
some of my favorite rock idols. In any case, listening to music is always a very intense voyage<br />
and a particularly emotional experience for me. Someone once said to me that listening to<br />
music should be like a ceremony celebrating the synchronicity of the sound and your emotions. I<br />
thought that was very well put.<br />
Performing is another story altogether, although this, too, is an escape from reality into a world of<br />
my own. At the same time, when I am singing,<br />
whether I am recording or on stage, I am a<br />
different persona entirely. I am actually quite<br />
shy so it is like a metamorphosis. And, of course,<br />
there is this catharsis when the public responds<br />
to you; all of a sudden, you have the sense of<br />
togetherness with the audience. Someone<br />
once said about me: “This little woman, who<br />
looked so harmless five minutes ago, got on<br />
stage and all of a sudden, it was like there was<br />
an explosion. She was someone else and we<br />
listened in awe!”<br />
Pieces of music I recommend/love<br />
Georges Bizet’s Carmen, is an opera I<br />
never tire of listening to, and “L’amour est<br />
un oiseau de rebelle” is an aria I would<br />
love to perform in French and in Spanish,<br />
combining different styles, à la Freddy<br />
Mercury.<br />
I would very much like to work on a<br />
modern arrangement of Beethoven’s Ode<br />
to Joy and re-write the lyrics as a kind of
ode to humanity and tolerance, in four or five languages. It could be performed together<br />
with a flash mob of dancers, rappers, singers and musicians of different cultures, filmed in<br />
front of all kinds of different places of faith with protagonists from all those different worlds.<br />
We would finish the piece by all holding our hands up in an act of solidarity. I think<br />
Jerusalem would provide an excellent “backdrop” since so many religions are represented<br />
there. I believe it could also be done as a You Tube clip, using a few technical tricks… I<br />
really liked Nürnberg’s flashmob’s rendition of Ode an die Freude in 2014, but I thought one<br />
could do so much more with this beautiful piece of music. The Ode to Joy is a piece of<br />
music that I never tire of listening to, as it fills my heart with optimism.<br />
Another favorite of mine is Charles Aznavour’s song “La Bohème.” That song touches every<br />
chord in my body. It is about youth and freedom and all the things I believe in. And<br />
Aznavour was my hero in every way!<br />
As already mentioned, Freddy Mercury and Montserrat<br />
Caballé performing “Barcelona” together 30 years ago is<br />
another inspiration for me in every way. I would very much<br />
like to perform a duet with an opera singer.<br />
And, last but not least, I love Peggy Lee’s songs, and hope<br />
to get a chance to revive them within the next few years.<br />
GETTING TO KNOW CHRISTINE<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself<br />
that not many people know. I am the coauthor<br />
and photographer of the book Stalin<br />
im Kopf, which was first published in May 1993.<br />
My ex -husband and I interviewed survivors of<br />
the dictatorship.<br />
Also in the 80s as part of my job, I got to<br />
interview Greek singer, Nana Mouskouri, on<br />
the occasion of one of her concerts in Vienna.<br />
If you could perform with a musician, who<br />
would it be? I would love to perform together<br />
with Quincy Jones who I greatly admire and<br />
respect. My dream would be to perform<br />
chansons, jazz, swing and blues - and perhaps<br />
even some of my own songs - for a charity<br />
concert. Perhaps even together with his<br />
greatest fan, Swiss band leader Pepe Lienhard<br />
and his Big Band. And since dreaming is not<br />
forbidden, I am still hopeful that this dream will<br />
come true some day, somehow, somewhere!<br />
The most unusual place I have performed in<br />
was: the Volkshaus in Zurich last year, but<br />
mainly because of the circumstances: It was<br />
indeed a huge challenge for me to sing there<br />
on my 60th Birthday and our wedding<br />
anniversary. We had a full house with over<br />
1,000 attendees and people came to listen to<br />
me from all over the world. The venue was<br />
really incredible, but I only got a soundcheck<br />
instead of a proper rehearsal, which was not<br />
easy for me. But I survived…and it was an<br />
incredible learning experience, from start to<br />
finish. Truly unforgettable!<br />
What are some of the things you would love to<br />
get better at/things you would like to stop<br />
doing? I would like to be more organized and<br />
more disciplined. From an artist’s point of view,<br />
I would very much like to continue learning<br />
how to sing styles that do not come easily to<br />
me, not just the “in-bred” chansons that<br />
everybody seems to want to hear me sing.<br />
I would like to stop letting negative people<br />
influence me in any way, stop letting negative<br />
criticism get me depressed, and concentrate<br />
on all the positive energies I receive.<br />
Then on a very superficial note, I would like to<br />
stop being so gourmande, as I know I would<br />
look much prettier if I finally got to lose those<br />
dreadful three kilos!<br />
15
What to look for in an Expat Tax Preparer?<br />
Tax season is just around the corner! You are pumped! And, like many American expats,<br />
you probably have your taxes prepared by a professional, or have at least considered<br />
having them prepared by a professional. When looking for someone to prepare your<br />
taxes, remember that not all tax preparers are created equal. Here is my list of 10 things<br />
you should consider when hiring an expat tax preparer:<br />
1. Are they specialized? Like any other professional service, tax is specialized.<br />
Expat tax preparation is not straightforward--you need a specialist. Look for tax<br />
preparers that prepare only expat returns.<br />
2. What is their experience and qualifications? Do they have any type of license?<br />
How long have they been preparing expat tax returns? Have they prepared returns<br />
similar to yours? You don’t want a tax preparer learning on the job on your return.<br />
3. What is their review procedure? You’d be surprised how many tax preparation<br />
firms don’t review thoroughly, or at all. We are all human and make mistakes. It<br />
would be a shame to have you return audited because your preparer accidently entered a number wrong;<br />
something that likely would have been caught in review.<br />
4. Do they have a PTIN? PTIN stands for Preparer Tax Identification Number. Anyone preparing or assisting<br />
with the preparation of a tax return for compensation is required by law to have one. No PTIN? Don’t hire<br />
them.<br />
5. Are they familiar with how the U.S. tax system interacts with the tax system of your country of<br />
residence? It will reduce the risk of mistakes, and save time and money, if the preparer already knows the<br />
intricacies how the U.S. tax system interacts with the tax system of your country of residence; including<br />
applicable tax treaties and totalization agreements.<br />
6. Do they speak the local language? It will make life easier if the preparer speaks the local language. This<br />
way they won’t need help translating your bank or income statements, local tax returns, and the like.<br />
7. Does the firm use in-house employees or contractors? You want a firm that only uses full-time in-house<br />
employees as they will likely have been fully vetted and trained by the firm, be available throughout the year,<br />
and be available to prepare your return the following year. Many firms use contractors and seasonal<br />
employees during tax season, which leads to compromised quality.<br />
8. What do they charge? Some preparers charge a flat fee, some charge hourly, or a combination. Make sure<br />
there is transparency when it comes to fees. Remember, you get what you pay for. The better the firm and the<br />
more qualified the preparer, the more you will pay. You likely won’t get a quality return for a few hundred<br />
bucks.<br />
9. What security measures do they take? Security is crucial. Make sure the preparer uses appropriate<br />
security measures; i.e. secure client portal, encrypted email, password protection.<br />
10. How long have they been in business? You don’t generally want to hire a brand new firm as they likely<br />
don’t have their business systems and process all worked out yet.<br />
I hope you find this information helpful when evaluating expat tax preparers! Good luck!<br />
Jimmy Sexton, LL.M., is an expert in the field of international taxation, with an<br />
emphasis on expat issues. He has presented to American expats at groups<br />
that include American women’s clubs throughout Europe and is a soughtafter<br />
expert for several news organizations, including CNN and the<br />
Washington Post. He is the President of Esquire Group, an international tax<br />
preparation firm and Premier Sponsor of <strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong> Magazine.<br />
16
Germany: In the Piano Zone<br />
ROBIN MELOY GOLDSBY<br />
American International <strong>Women</strong>’s Club of<br />
Cologne<br />
From: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania & New York City<br />
Lives: Outside Cologne, Germany<br />
I grew up in Pittsburgh. My father, Bob<br />
Rawsthorne, a jazz drummer, was the featured<br />
percussionist on the Mister Rogers Neighborhood<br />
program. Most kids in our community played hide<br />
and seek, my sister and I played “sound-check.”<br />
Photographer: Julia Goldsby<br />
My first job as a pianist was at the age of<br />
eighteen, working in a bar on Nantucket called<br />
The Club Car. A lecherous nightclub manager<br />
hired me to play five nights a week for fifty bucks<br />
a night. I only knew ten songs, and nine of them<br />
were Bach. I dragged music books with me to the<br />
gig. I was clueless, but determined to do a good<br />
job. I played for drunken yachtsmen. One night a<br />
week was gay night. It was 1976, so we brayed<br />
patriotic songs and had a Kate Smith singalong<br />
contest. God Bless America.<br />
In 1980 I moved to New York City and began playing in swanky hotels. My first job in NYC was<br />
playing at Donald Trump’s Grand Hyatt at Grand Central Station. I survived. My skirts were short,<br />
my heels were high, my hair was big. I spent fifteen years honing my craft in Manhattan—and<br />
eventually discovered my pianistic voice. I play gentle music and try to do so with some degree<br />
of elegance.<br />
After dating most of the eligible rhythm section players in New York (there weren’t that many), I<br />
fell in love with bassist John<br />
Goldsby. We married and had a<br />
baby. John was scouted by the<br />
Grammy-winning WDR Big Band<br />
(Cologne) and we decided to<br />
give Europe a chance. After<br />
moving to Germany in 1994, we<br />
had a second child. I stayed<br />
home with the kids for five years,<br />
but kept busy composing and<br />
recording. I landed a cushy job<br />
playing at Schlosshotel Lerbach<br />
(a country castle) in 2000 and<br />
spent the next fourteen years<br />
performing there, every weekend.<br />
I also produced a concert series<br />
and an annual children’s musical.<br />
After the castle closed in 2014, Photographer: Julia Goldsby<br />
17
I moved to the Excelsior<br />
Hotel Ernst, a five-star<br />
hotel in the heart of<br />
downtown Cologne.<br />
The plan from now on is<br />
to continue doing what<br />
I’m doing—composing<br />
and performing<br />
peaceful music. I’m<br />
also writing a new<br />
book, and starting work<br />
on a podcast that will<br />
launch in 2019.<br />
My first influences were<br />
from my jazz musician<br />
father—Oscar Peterson,<br />
Photographer: Julia Goldsby<br />
Bill Evans, André Previn.<br />
I think on some level I<br />
didn’t want to compete with my dad. Or maybe I was disheartened by the lack of female<br />
instrumentalists in the jazz world—“you can’t be what you can’t see”—so I began finding my<br />
own style, listening to pop music. I loved Carole King because she played the piano and wrote<br />
her own music. I also had strong classical influences, mostly Debussy and Ravel. The world of<br />
instrumental music was very male back then; there were a lot of female singers hanging around,<br />
but I wanted to be a player.<br />
A life in the arts means there are surprises every day. I suppose I am delighted, but not surprised,<br />
by the way music has gotten me to some of world’s most fascinating places. I’m still shocked<br />
that there aren’t more female composers. When I attend the GEMA conference for top<br />
composers every year, I am always surprised by how few women are in attendance—I believe<br />
in Germany the number hovers somewhere around seven percent. That’s crazy.<br />
I think that the world needs live<br />
music! My piano style seems<br />
simple. Fragile, even. But<br />
effortlessness comes at a price.<br />
Unlike many of today’s “internet<br />
musicians,” I’ve spent decades<br />
playing music for a real audience<br />
with real feelings and real-time<br />
responses. Because I am<br />
constantly connecting to listeners,<br />
face to face and heart to heart, I<br />
know a thing or two about how to<br />
create atmosphere. My<br />
recordings are a result of this<br />
expertise. Now, more than ever,<br />
we’re needed. Recorded music<br />
plays an important role in all of our<br />
lives, but live music offers<br />
something more. Because it relies<br />
on the synergy of audience and<br />
musician, it results in compassion<br />
on both sides.<br />
18
I compose music and I also improvise. When I compose, I always start with a topic, or theme,<br />
and let the music tell me how I feel. I edit constantly until I am satisfied. Composing a piece of<br />
music is very much like writing an essay. Improvising is the musical equivalent of journaling—I start<br />
with a theme and see where it takes me. Yes, it’s a kind of therapy.<br />
I currently compose music and write stories about life as an expat American in Europe. As an<br />
active member of FAWCO, I strive to unite women of all backgrounds with beautiful music and<br />
meaningful words about our shared humanity. My new concert program, Home and Away,<br />
raises awareness and money for the FAWCO Target Program for Education.<br />
As a cultural liaison for FAWCO for the past eight years, my concerts have raised awareness and<br />
over $40,000 for projects targeting Human Rights (Free the Girls/ providing economic<br />
opportunities for survivors of sex-trafficking); Environment (Tabitha Wells for Clean Water,<br />
Cambodia), and, currently, Education (Hope Beyond Displacement/CRP Jordan). My music and<br />
stories motivate other expatriate American women to recognize their strengths while partnering<br />
with their international<br />
communities to lift up<br />
those in need.<br />
I value family. I am the<br />
sixty-year old mother of<br />
two socially-aware young<br />
-adult Americans (Curtis<br />
and Julia), both raised in<br />
Germany, and the wife of<br />
American jazz bassist<br />
John Goldsby. I stand<br />
committed to helping my<br />
sisters around the world. I<br />
believe in the power of<br />
music, love and respect,<br />
and the importance of<br />
education for all of our<br />
girls. I trust that our shared<br />
strength and instinctive<br />
kindness—along with our<br />
willingness to speak up, to listen, and to stay committed to the good fight—will help us overcome<br />
the waves of anger sweeping our global community. My musical and literary program shines<br />
light into dark corners and encourages hope. Am I proud of that? Yes.<br />
When I perform I call it the Piano Zone. I try to stay in the moment, reach into my quiver of songs,<br />
and pull back gently on my repertoire bow. Time is on my side; equilibrium always returns to the<br />
space my music occupies. That’s the best, most miraculous part of playing live—witnessing the<br />
effect music has on my audience, and in turn, what they give back to me. When I’m in the<br />
piano zone, each song, like a vote for kindness or a prayer for peace, carries a fleeting missive of<br />
love to the neighborhood. When we connect with each other, we<br />
are all capable of simple acts of grace. This is my idea of revenge<br />
in a big, violent world. Music. It’s the least, and the most, I can do.<br />
Pieces of music I recommend/love<br />
Ravel‘s “Piano Sonatine.”<br />
Debussy‘s “La fille aux cheveux de lin.”<br />
Anything by Ludovico Einaudi.<br />
Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” as performed by Glenn Gould.<br />
A recording of my daughter, improvising on the piano when<br />
she doesn’t know I am listening.<br />
19
GETTING TO KNOW ROBIN<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself that<br />
not many people know. My music is<br />
everywhere—it has been streamed more than<br />
85 million times on Pandora, and is equally<br />
popular on Spotify and Apple Music. My<br />
biggest audience demographic is young<br />
women between the ages of 18 -24. They listen<br />
to my music while studying.<br />
If you could perform with one musician, who<br />
would it be and why? Prince, because he was<br />
the coolest, most talented musician to ever<br />
walk the face of the earth.<br />
The most unusual place I have performed or<br />
listened to music was… I played at<br />
Buckingham Palace. I performed my Home<br />
and Away program there in November 2017<br />
for Prince Charles and 250 of his guests,<br />
celebrating the 20 th Anniversary of In Kind<br />
Direct, an organization that encourages<br />
corporate giving for social good. I got to meet<br />
HRH personally and speak with him. It was<br />
every bit as fabulous as you might imagine.<br />
You can read the full story about the palace<br />
gig here.<br />
I also performed for Chancellor Angela Merkel<br />
in Berlin, but Buckingham was more fun.<br />
Oh yeah, I played a concert for naked people<br />
at the Mediterana Spa here in Germany. Due<br />
to the man-spread of the guy directly in front<br />
of the piano, I kept my eyes on the keys. My<br />
husband tried to get me to play the “Hokey<br />
Pokey,” but I showed restraint.<br />
If we looked in your purse/wallet/pocket what<br />
three things would we find that would tell us<br />
something about you? My Bose noise<br />
cancelling headphones. I use them to cancel<br />
noise as much as I use them for music. Also my<br />
Kindle as I am constantly reading. Writers need<br />
to read, and I do. Then about one billion<br />
photos of my kids, stored on my phone.<br />
What are some of the things you would love to<br />
get better at and things you would like to stop<br />
doing? I would love to get better at saying<br />
“no” to projects that don’t bring me joy. I<br />
would like to sleep more, drink less, and stop<br />
worrying about sagging skin. I would like to<br />
completely eliminate “imposter syndrome”<br />
from my life.<br />
Photo by Paul Burns, Royal Photographer<br />
20
A Club Inspires: AWC Gothenburg<br />
There are FAWCO clubs of all sizes and shapes across the world. A Club Inspires is a feature<br />
where you will learn more about one of them. This time we are pleased to introduce to you the<br />
American <strong>Women</strong>’s Club of Gothenburg, Sweden, from Region 2. Over to their president, Dorothy<br />
Andersson...<br />
The idea to start a club for American women in Gothenburg<br />
was first proposed to the American consul by Karin Lundgren,<br />
Consular Secretary, during the early years of the Second World<br />
War. Although it didn’t happen immediately, in 1947, Vice<br />
Consul Lamar Mulliner became interested and when his sister,<br />
Florence, arrived in February 1948, a group of American women<br />
were invited to the Mulliner home to discuss the possibility of<br />
starting a club. Thus, the American <strong>Women</strong>’s Club of<br />
Gothenburg was born.<br />
The first meeting was held at Margaretabergskolan on April 1, in<br />
1948, and there were 18 members attending. Through the years<br />
membership has fluctuated, and the club has survived mainly<br />
due to the American women living here because they are<br />
married to Swedish men.<br />
In 1987, we joined FAWCO, enabling us to have a more active<br />
say on policies and legislation affecting us as Americans abroad. For many years, we have<br />
awarded The Florence Albrechtsson American English Dictionary Award to Swedish students, as<br />
well as hosting a student picnic for American Exchange students in Gothenburg.<br />
For the past 10 years, our club has had our monthly meeting at the Emigranternas Hus (Emigrant<br />
House). The Emigrant House focuses mainly on the topic of migration and is a center for research<br />
and meetings between people. Its aim is to increase knowledge about migration, understanding<br />
and tolerance between different groups and nations.<br />
21
22<br />
The center is located in the Customs House<br />
near to the harbor. This was where all the<br />
emigrants left from during the great<br />
emigration period between 1850 and 1930.<br />
Every emigrant had to first pass the Customs<br />
House to show their emigrant contract. There<br />
were more than 1 million emigrants that<br />
passed and got their emigrant contracts<br />
issued before they could begin their journey<br />
towards the new country.<br />
The monthly meeting has a theme, and<br />
recently, for example, we have had a guest<br />
speakers who spoke about topics such as<br />
getting a Swedish driver’s license and tax<br />
advice; other times, we have had members do presentations on their hobbies and careers.<br />
Membership in our club is open to American women and women who have strong contacts<br />
with the United States. Our members are mainly Americans; however, we do have several<br />
Swedes who have lived in the United States for a long period of time. We like to think we bring<br />
together American women living in Gothenburg area to gain companionship, stimulate<br />
cultural identity and offer assistance adjusting to living in Sweden.<br />
There are annual elections for our 11 club positions each March. Unfortunately, we have not<br />
had many volunteers who want to be part of the board in recent years - probably because we<br />
are such a small club and many members have already been on the board - so currently some<br />
positions are empty or members are doing more than one position.<br />
AWC Gothenburg annual events:<br />
Valentine’s Day – to mark the occasion, we host an event where we have a craft or make<br />
something: for example, this past February we made chocolate truffles.<br />
Fourth of July picnic – traditionally we get together around the 4 th of July to celebrate. In the<br />
past, we celebrated along with the baseball team called The Gothenburg Sharks. We played<br />
softball with them, and children tried out bee-ball (comparable to T-ball). This past year we had<br />
a day at the beach with children’s crafts and swimming.<br />
Halloween children’s party – this is an annual event and it is our most popular. We host activities<br />
for the children as well as a trick-or-treat walk. This is open to non-members to help promote<br />
membership. This past month, we also had pumpkin carving to tie in with Halloween.<br />
Thanksgiving potluck – this year we are planning to have a family Thanksgiving potluck dinner,<br />
and our members can bring their<br />
spouses and family members.<br />
December Lucia meeting – an annual<br />
meeting that celebrates the Swedish<br />
tradition of St. Lucia and the holiday.<br />
Other club events:<br />
Movie night –we rented a movie<br />
theater salon for members and their<br />
guests with popcorn and soda. This<br />
was a very popular event and we<br />
hope to do it again.<br />
Our 70 th Anniversary – this year our<br />
club turned 70 years old! We<br />
celebrated with a luncheon at a<br />
restaurant by the sea. Members were<br />
invited to tell their favorite memories
of the club. A lot of comments were about the<br />
friendships that have been made due to the<br />
club and the laughter. It was a beautiful day<br />
where we enjoyed each other’s stories and<br />
memories in addition celebrating the history of<br />
the club.<br />
Gothenburg Film Festival - AWC Oslo comes to<br />
visit us for this, and it’s a great opportunity for<br />
the two clubs to get together to talk about the<br />
film festival and have dinner.<br />
US Embassy – we are proud of the fact that it<br />
was AWC Gothenburg that got the US Embassy<br />
to make biannual visits to the city, making it<br />
easier for our members and others to renew<br />
passports and report births. We host a welcome<br />
table and often have also had activities for children with crafts as well with learning about the<br />
United States.<br />
Charitable activities – last year, we raised money for the organization Operation Smile. We had<br />
a raffle where we had themed gift bags. For example, since we had had the movie night event,<br />
we had a movie bag that included movie gift tickets, soda and popcorn. The raffle took place<br />
during our Lucia meeting, which is right before Christmas. We also support the Haiti Relief Fund<br />
and had a food drive for a local organization that needed support.<br />
Gothenburg is on the west coast of Sweden and is the second largest city in the country. There<br />
are 20 museums, 12 tram lines, two universities, six restaurants boasting one star in the Guide<br />
Michelin, and lately, the local beer scene has been growing; it’s now one of the hottest hubs for<br />
craft beer. Also in the city is the largest amusement park in Scandinavia. In 2017, the city was<br />
designated the World’s Most Sustainable Destination. So as you can tell that the city itself has<br />
plenty to offer – and that’s before we even talk about the rocky shoreline and beautiful green<br />
forests within minutes of the center.<br />
Sweden itself is a beautiful place, and it is what I imagined when I moved here. There is so much<br />
to see and even though I have already seen it, it is a delight to experience it again because<br />
Sweden feels genuine. I especially love the islands outside Gothenburg and the islands north of<br />
Gothenburg. I love spending summer days island-hopping, traveling with the ferry to the islands.<br />
There are so many islands to discover. The sun sets after 10 pm, which makes the day so much<br />
longer to explore places.<br />
23<br />
Another favorite of mine is the Göteborg Film<br />
Festival. It is the largest film festival in the<br />
Nordic countries, with about 450 films from 80<br />
countries. Visitors also come from many<br />
different countries to see the films. (The<br />
American <strong>Women</strong>’s Club loves that AWC<br />
Oslo comes to visit during the film festival. We<br />
love to see them when they come, and we<br />
usually meet for a dinner).<br />
The stereotypical Swede is a serious person,<br />
but in Gothenburg, people have a way of<br />
joking which is in the form of puns and with<br />
irony. Why don’t you come and experience<br />
for yourself? We’d love to welcome you to<br />
our city!<br />
Dorothy Andersson,<br />
President, AWC Gothenburg
USA: 40 Years At The Opera<br />
24<br />
I grew up in Chicago, the eldest of 4 children and<br />
the only girl. My dad was an attorney and my<br />
mother a visual artist, pianist and organist. I started<br />
music, dance and theatre lessons at 7; harp lessons<br />
at 13; and my formal voice training started at 16.<br />
I was a double major in harp and voice in college,<br />
first at Northwestern University and later the University<br />
of Illinois. I sang in a few summer opera programs<br />
during college and then auditioned for baritone Tito<br />
Gobbi and vocal coach Luigi Ricci, both of Rome, at<br />
the Lyric Opera in Chicago. They encouraged me to<br />
move to Italy at the beginning of 1974 to study with<br />
them, before I had completed my degree. (I did<br />
eventually graduate!) Two years later, Maestro<br />
Gobbi and his wife, Tilde, arranged for the director of<br />
Opera Forum in Enschede, NL to hear me sing and I was hired for my first engagement in 1976.<br />
They also introduced me to the opera company’s first conductor, Arthur Fagen, who conducted<br />
my professional debut, as Zerlina in Don Giovanni, and whom I married in 1978. We had 2<br />
daughters (Alicia, born in NL and Rebecca, in BE) while I continued to sing operas and concerts<br />
in the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Israel. When we lived in Belgium in 1984, I joined<br />
the American <strong>Women</strong>’s Club in Antwerp, while I was singing at the Opera Voor Flanderen. My<br />
operatic career was full-time for 13 years,<br />
mostly abroad.<br />
When we moved back to the States in<br />
1986, I still continued to sing, but found<br />
the traveling, with our children in school,<br />
quite difficult while my husband was<br />
traveling for work as well. I wound down<br />
singing full-time, but was still ambitious for<br />
a career and went to law school from<br />
1990-93. I practiced law briefly and then<br />
had our 3 rd daughter (Gabriela, in NY –<br />
we missed having the BeNeLux kids by<br />
one). When I returned to work a few<br />
years later, it was as a law school<br />
administrator. Throughout all of this time, I<br />
continued to sing benefit concerts and<br />
some symphony concerts in and around<br />
NY. Then in 2002, we returned to<br />
Germany. My husband was appointed<br />
General Music Director in Dortmund and<br />
PAULETTE BERMAN FAGEN<br />
FAUSA Member (formerly of American <strong>Women</strong>’s<br />
Club of Düsseldorf)<br />
From: Chicago, IL<br />
Lives: Bloomington, IN and Atlanta, GA
we settled 70 km away, in Düsseldorf, to be near an<br />
International School and the American <strong>Women</strong>’s<br />
Club (AWCD). I continued to sing benefit concerts,<br />
holiday concerts with the Dortmund Orchestra,<br />
events for the AWCD, as well as for the Gala<br />
evening of the 2006 Biennial FAWCO Conference<br />
which took place in Berlin.<br />
When we repatriated a second time, in 2007, I<br />
joined FAUSA right away and was grateful to be<br />
one of FAWCO’s representatives to the UN<br />
Economic and Social Council in NY. But we moved<br />
to Bloomington, Indiana shortly afterwards for my<br />
husband to join the faculty of IU’s music school,<br />
where he is chair of orchestral conducting. My last<br />
professional engagement was as the Soprano<br />
soloist in Mahler’s Second Symphony with the New<br />
Mexico Philharmonic in Albuquerque, shortly after<br />
my 60 th birthday, 6 years ago. Since that time,<br />
because of our involvement in the IU music school,<br />
summer opera programs abroad, as well as the<br />
Atlanta opera, where my husband is music director,<br />
I come into contact with, coach and advise many<br />
young singers, though I don’t maintain a voice<br />
studio. In addition, our youngest daughter,<br />
Gabriela, is a grad student at IU in vocal<br />
performance. (She was the winner of FAWCO’s 2015 Viola Wheeler Arts Education award.)<br />
Today I continue working with voice students. I certainly love giving moral support and advice to<br />
many of the talented young singers we meet. I’m fortunate that through my husband’s work and<br />
my daughter’s operatic aspirations, I continue to keep all that I have learned in opera relevant<br />
to my current life, though it is no longer my career. And once in a while I dust off the vocal cords<br />
to sing for charity or fun.<br />
The first music I listened to and imitated, as a teenager, was that of Maria Callas. I later studied<br />
with her frequent collaborator Tito Gobbi. He was a master interpreter, as was Callas. Every<br />
nuanced bit of drama was in their vocal interpretations. Over the years, we have developed<br />
friendships with many of the international opera stars, instrumentalists, stage directors and<br />
conductors whom we once looked up to. It has been a very rewarding and continually<br />
interesting life path.<br />
I find the amount of information and recorded performances available through the internet<br />
amazingly wonderful and, at the same time, intimidating. Students have such a wealth of<br />
potential training to refer to, right in their computers or phones. Yet, it is almost too much, as it<br />
needs to be curated to be effective. Young musicians are pulled in many directions. They also<br />
have to be social media savvy and entrepreneurial. When I studied in Rome, I focused on my<br />
technique and learning one role at a time. Building up a repertoire, incrementally, that served<br />
me throughout my career. I did not have to show the world what I could do, until I was ready.<br />
Today, I think there is over-exposure and constant competition for young singers. That can be<br />
difficult, as voices need to be gently cultivated and allowed time to grow. The voices that are<br />
the flashiest at a young age are not necessarily those that develop into “recording quality”<br />
beautiful voices or those that fill a theatre with luscious sound, and if not careful, they often burn<br />
out early. The fact that I can still sing healthfully into my 60s is owed to the nurturing I had as a<br />
student – and that I didn’t overuse my voice in the past 40 years.<br />
25
Music is an artistic expression of<br />
communication and emotion. If you have<br />
nothing to communicate, if you are not<br />
tapped into the essence of your being and<br />
expression, the audience will not be<br />
moved, no matter how technically<br />
excellent you may be. But if the essence is<br />
there, it can be magical. And that can be<br />
so, even when the execution is not<br />
technically “perfect.” Being in touch with<br />
that essence is the most profoundly moving<br />
experience as a performer. I truly love the<br />
process of learning and performing from<br />
beginning to end – and not for the<br />
audience reaction, though that is an<br />
added bonus.<br />
I am not a passive listener. I once took a<br />
sculpture class and the teacher played<br />
opera recordings as background music. I<br />
could not become one with my sculpting,<br />
because opera is never background music<br />
for me. I am actively listening to and<br />
assessing every note, word, quality of sound<br />
and tempo. That can be interesting and<br />
satisfying as an audience member, but too<br />
distracting in other settings.<br />
I sang 36 different leading roles during the<br />
active years of my career, from Maria in<br />
West Side Story, in a year-long run at Berlin’s Theater des Westens, to over 60 performances of the<br />
Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Magic Flute. But, I am most proud of my collaboration with<br />
composer Lorenzo Ferrero. I performed the world premiere of his song cycle Canzoni d’Amore,<br />
written for my voice (I am a Coloratura Soprano,) at the Biennale of Venice and sang the title<br />
role in the German premiere of his opera Marilyn, as part of the dokumenta VII modern art<br />
festival in Kassel, Germany.<br />
Pieces of music I recommend/love<br />
To Listen to:<br />
“Rhapsody in Blue” by George Gershwin: I have listened to and loved this piece since my<br />
childhood.<br />
Brahms’ “Haydn Variations” conducted by Pablo Casals – my husband introduced me to<br />
this recording early in our relationship, I continue to love it.<br />
Scarpia’s 1 st act closing in Tosca, sung by Tito Gobbi. It was the first thing I heard Maestro<br />
Gobbi sing on recording and live, at the first opera performance I ever attended at 16 years<br />
old. It’s fabulous!<br />
“Because I Knew You” from Wicked, sung by Kristen<br />
Chenoweth and Idina Menzel; it is so meaningful and<br />
touching.<br />
To Perform:<br />
I would love to sing Violetta in La Traviata, if I were still at my<br />
peak. I have performed the aria “Sempre Libera” and the<br />
duet with Germont many times with orchestra, but never<br />
the entire role.<br />
26
GETTING TO KNOW PAULETTE<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself that<br />
not many people know. I was a serious ice<br />
skater from 8 to 13 years old. I spent every<br />
afternoon and evening at an indoor ice rink,<br />
through dinner and homework, until 10 pm<br />
(probably a form of childcare, in my parents’<br />
eyes.) I not only prepared for competitions, but<br />
regularly performed skating solos and sang for<br />
birthday parties at the rink. However, because<br />
I started getting frequent sore throats and<br />
loved to sing more than skate, I stopped<br />
skating. Still, I think that the discipline I learned<br />
skating and being exposed to the dedication<br />
of my very accomplished peers was formative<br />
in my approach to singing.<br />
If you could perform with, or meet, one<br />
musician, who would it be? I would have loved<br />
to work with Mozart. I have sung many Mozart<br />
operas – all masterpieces. I would have loved<br />
to coach those roles with the master.<br />
The most unusual place I have listened to<br />
music was… in a large empty space in Paris,<br />
Atelier des Lumières, with projections of<br />
Hundertwasser and Klimt artwork on the<br />
concrete walls. It was not live music nor the<br />
actual artwork, but once I got over the virtual<br />
nature of the performance, it was amazingly<br />
moving to be enveloped in the multi-sensory<br />
artistic experience.<br />
If we looked in your purse what three things<br />
would we find that would tell us something<br />
about you? A handcrafted silver thimble in a<br />
small velvet pouch. – I am a quilter.<br />
A small pad of paper for notes. – I am a writer.<br />
Crayons – I am a grandmother.<br />
What are some of the things you would love to<br />
get better at and things you would like to stop<br />
doing? I often have a hard time saying thank<br />
you to a compliment. In singing, I was often<br />
fixated on what I needed to improve and<br />
imperfections in a performance. While it is<br />
important to be aware of those things to better<br />
your performances, it is insulting to the person<br />
giving a compliment to have their words<br />
negated and it also diminishes the<br />
performance. This carries over in other aspects<br />
of life, such as quilting and writing. I am<br />
continually working on this. Just say thank you!<br />
27
Norway: A Note from Oslo via Hawaii<br />
KATELYN SWEENEY CHING<br />
American <strong>Women</strong>’s Club of Oslo, Norway<br />
From: Kaneohe, Hawaii<br />
Lives: Oslo, Norway<br />
Music has always been an inseparable part of my<br />
identity. When I was in elementary school I would<br />
spend all of my time creating stories and<br />
recording them on toy cassette players. It wasn’t a<br />
surprise to me when, aged fourteen, I started<br />
writing songs on the piano because it felt like<br />
inspiration was flowing into the keys in the same<br />
way they did on a typewriter. By the time I was in<br />
high school, I was interning at a recording studio<br />
and performing around Honolulu. I was interested<br />
in many other subjects in addition to music, so<br />
when it came time to look for colleges, I chose to<br />
pursue a liberal arts degree.<br />
College woke me up to the monumental depth of history and tradition in music. Prior to<br />
university, I had only heard about major male composers and had no idea that living<br />
composers, especially female composers, existed. I believed that composers simply woke up<br />
with ideas in their head and poured them on to paper with flowing quills; in reality, the creative<br />
process is often a combination of logic, structure, and inspiration. I began to understand why<br />
there were so few female composers throughout the history of Western music after experiencing<br />
how much training goes into becoming one.<br />
Majoring in music was one of the toughest paths I ever took but I am grateful for it. In high<br />
school, I was able to breeze through music courses and never had to study or practice very<br />
much. College was a<br />
different story. I struggled<br />
to understand music<br />
theory and nearly<br />
dropped out of being a<br />
music major after I failed<br />
my first exam. The<br />
textbook was a maze of<br />
symbols that felt like it was<br />
written in code I couldn’t<br />
decipher. Thankfully, my<br />
professors encouraged<br />
me to continue and<br />
helped me get the extra<br />
academic support I<br />
needed. Once I caught<br />
up on the fundamentals,<br />
music theory became an<br />
28
instrumental part of my<br />
understanding of how music works,<br />
and is written. Studying music gave<br />
me the tools and context I craved<br />
to expand my compositional<br />
toolbox. I also started my own<br />
piano school and worked as an<br />
accompanist for schools in and<br />
around Honolulu.<br />
After I finished my master’s degree<br />
in composition, I went to Los<br />
Angeles to work as an intern at a<br />
major film music studio. While I<br />
continued to pursue a permanent<br />
role in a studio, I worked as an<br />
executive assistant to be able to stay in LA.<br />
A year later, a shot of magic burst out of nowhere. The biology professor from graduate school<br />
was publishing her memoir and it was on the road to becoming an international bestseller. She<br />
asked me to compose a piece for the accompanying audiobook. While I was working on the<br />
piece, her best friend happened to be in town for a family event; he ended up coming to the<br />
recording sessions. We fell in love even though his job would be relocating to Norway. This meant<br />
we had to decide where we would live.<br />
Two years ago we decided to move to Oslo. So here I am now, carving out a quiet existence. It<br />
has taken time to find out how to get immersed in the music scene here, but there have been<br />
small successes. Most recently, one of my songs was selected as a winner in a contest for<br />
Scandic Hotels.<br />
I miss the music community I had in Honolulu and Los Angeles, but am trying to develop<br />
relationships here while also balancing intensive language courses and a full-time job in a<br />
startup. Growing up, I was told relentlessly that music is a tough industry to be in, and yet, I<br />
persevered. However, after a decade of not having health insurance, a dependable stream of<br />
income, retirement, and working night hours, I decided to find steady income outside the<br />
industry so that I can write on my own terms. Regardless, creating music will remain an integral<br />
part of my being, whether or not anyone out there is listening. I find that a room filled with<br />
candlelight while the darkness and cold rages outside sparks my creativity.<br />
I’m currently working on an<br />
album that is inspired by the<br />
history of 19 th century migrant<br />
workers in Hawai’i. I’m<br />
fascinated by the impact the<br />
sugar industry had on the<br />
contemporary political and<br />
cultural makeup of the islands<br />
and am exploring these<br />
themes in my writing. My<br />
great-great grandparents<br />
came from Canton, China to<br />
work as sugarcane plantation<br />
workers, so the project has a<br />
personal connection for me.<br />
29
Pieces of music I recommend/love<br />
Scarlet’s Walk, Tori Amos.<br />
Symphony no. 9 in E minor, Dvořák.<br />
Ola Gjeilo, Ola Gjeilo.<br />
String Quartet in F major, Maurice Ravel.<br />
Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi– The Four Seasons;<br />
Max Richter.<br />
CLICK HERE TO<br />
HEAR KATELYN<br />
GETTING TO KNOW KATELYN<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself that<br />
not many people know. I am fairly sure I never<br />
tried a hamburger until I was over 25.<br />
If we looked in your purse/wallet/pocket, what<br />
three things would we find that would tell us<br />
something about you? 3 different highlighters<br />
in peach shades (easier on the eyes and yet<br />
also helps important materials stand out),<br />
about 4 lip balms (always chapped lips up<br />
here) and my textbooks for Norwegian class<br />
(this has been my life for two years!)<br />
What are some of the things you would love to<br />
get better at and things you would like to stop<br />
doing? I would like to continue to get better at<br />
composing and teaching. There is endless<br />
need for improvement.<br />
Happy Holidays! Happy Pajama Days!<br />
30<br />
Nothing says “you’re my favorite” more than the<br />
gift of pajamas. The Pajama Company has<br />
something for everyone on your gift list-including<br />
you! Visit our website to see our collections of<br />
nightshirts, PJ bottoms, matching sets for the whole<br />
family and more! There is no time to waste!<br />
Whether it’s something for a serious sleeper or for<br />
your cuddle buddy, pajamas are a “warm hug” to<br />
family and friends.<br />
Ellie Badanes, FAUSA Member and The Pajama<br />
Company Founder
If I were a musical instrument I would be...<br />
..a piano. I<br />
used to love<br />
improvising on<br />
the piano<br />
when I was<br />
young, in spite<br />
of the fact<br />
that when I was a child, my teacher in<br />
Vienna – a petite but energetic elderly<br />
lady - would actually take a ruler and<br />
beat my fingers whenever I got a tone<br />
wrong!<br />
CHRSTINE FEDERSPIEL<br />
..a cello for sure! A cello is<br />
beautiful and curvy and<br />
makes the most divine<br />
dark and powerful sounds.<br />
Girl power at its best!<br />
ROBIN SMIRNOV<br />
..a French horn. The<br />
sounds are so rich, and<br />
they come from more<br />
than ten feet of pipe.<br />
RICK CHIZMADIA<br />
..a saxophone because the sound gets people’s<br />
attention. It is so beautiful and it can go from low to<br />
high. You can swing<br />
me low and then up<br />
high. I am a beautiful<br />
instrument and my<br />
sound is unique. I can<br />
make any band<br />
sound outstanding.<br />
BEVERLY MINOR<br />
...a drum kit. If I was his drum kit, I could<br />
shout when he misses a beat: my<br />
husband has had the desire to learn for<br />
many years, but he has not discovered<br />
how he needs to walk before he can<br />
run.<br />
MARGARET HILDITCH<br />
...played by the right musician, a cello. The<br />
sound is so rich and sonorous. The cello can<br />
sing, support, be delicate and resonate<br />
through the theatre. Beautiful cello playing<br />
can move me to tears.<br />
PAULETTE FAGEN<br />
...a piano, of course. An orchestra in its own<br />
right, the piano is the most female of all<br />
instruments – a multi-tasker capable of a wide<br />
range of emotions<br />
and fascinating<br />
stories.<br />
ROBIN MELOY<br />
GOLDSBY<br />
31
Austria: Singing for the Lord<br />
I grew up in Woodville, Mississippi, on a farm, one of<br />
eleven children. My family had horses, cows, hogs, goats,<br />
dogs and cats. I had a pet pig called Tiny. My father had<br />
a large garden and he raised potatoes, corn and sugar<br />
cane. He also worked in a factory. My church did not<br />
have a piano so the old people used to pat their feet<br />
and clap their hands. We did not have a choir and kids<br />
in the church were never given the opportunity to sing. I<br />
joined the high school marching band where I played<br />
the saxophone.<br />
Growing up I loved to listen to music, but never<br />
envisioned myself as a singer because I was very shy and<br />
did not believe I was musically inclined. My family did not<br />
have a TV so I often listened to Motown music on the<br />
radio; my favorite singers were Aretha Franklin, Natalie<br />
Cole and the Staple Singers. I still listen to the same people today with the addition of the<br />
Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir.<br />
I left home at 18 to attend Alcorn State University where I studied office administration. I also<br />
joined the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority. One of the girls said that I sang as though I had a frog in my<br />
throat and she hated it when I even sang background. Not an easy thing to hear!<br />
After graduating from the University, I moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, to live with my brothers.<br />
Two of them sang in a gospel singing group along with a cousin and asked me to join them. I<br />
loved gospel music but<br />
didn't think I was gifted<br />
enough to sing.<br />
Eventually, I joined<br />
them and my voice<br />
begin to develop. After<br />
my early experience it<br />
surprised me when<br />
people said they liked<br />
my singing. I eventually<br />
joined a church in New<br />
Orleans and began to<br />
sing solos.<br />
While living in New<br />
Orleans, I started to<br />
participate with church<br />
groups traveling<br />
BEVERLY MINOR<br />
American <strong>Women</strong>’s Association of Vienna, Austria<br />
From: Mississippi, USA<br />
Lives: Vienna, Austria<br />
32
abroad on short-term mission<br />
journeys. My first trip was to<br />
Ryazan, Russia, where I<br />
evangelized, sang solos and<br />
accompanied a praise and<br />
worship team. Some years later, I<br />
relocated to Georgia and<br />
attended First Baptist Church of<br />
Atlanta. I joined the choir and<br />
sometimes sang on In Touch<br />
Ministries, which was broadcast<br />
nationally and internationally. I<br />
became quite popular and<br />
began to sing at weddings,<br />
funerals and Christmas parties,<br />
etc. During this period, I<br />
continued to travel abroad<br />
singing with a group.<br />
After taking an early retirement from Delta Air Lines, I went on to work as a banker for Wells<br />
Fargo and Fidelity National Bank. Then in 2013, a Polish choir (Gospel Joy), asked me to join<br />
them in Poland for a year as one of their lead singers. I had often considered moving to Europe<br />
but did not know how it could happen. I was able to get monetary support from my church,<br />
family and friends and so by the end of that year, I felt secure enough to resign from my place<br />
of employment, put my furniture in storage, rent my house and say goodbye to my family. In<br />
January 2014, I was off to Poznan, Poland.<br />
When the year ended, I moved to Vienna, Austria and now I work as a Ministry Assistant at the<br />
Christian International Church, which is located in the 10 th District. I am a song leader in my<br />
church and I also formed a small group which is called Soundz of Joy.<br />
When I got to Vienna I had googled “choirs in Vienna” and lo and behold, there was the<br />
Longfield Gospel Choir. So, I joined two of the Longfield choirs and have traveled with them<br />
singing in Denmark, Germany and all over Austria. It is always special to me when the AWA<br />
Vienna ladies attend our concerts, especially when we sang at St. Stephen's Cathedral. The<br />
Longfield Choirs (a total of four choirs under the same director) just completed a CD and I am<br />
a song leader on three of the songs.<br />
33<br />
I enjoy living in Vienna and<br />
think that singing is the best job<br />
in the world. Singing gospel<br />
songs is right in my element<br />
and I hope, in the future, to get<br />
trained so I could add some<br />
Christian jazz to my genre. My<br />
dream would be to travel<br />
round the world singing with a<br />
small band. Over the years I<br />
have had the opportunity to<br />
travel around the world and<br />
sing: from the streets of Hong<br />
Kong to Argentina and Chile,<br />
to Costa Rica and many<br />
places in the USA, to Canada<br />
to Egypt and many countries<br />
around Europe.
It feels good when someone in one of<br />
these countries remembers me and<br />
some still extend an invitation to come<br />
back to see them.<br />
I would also like to learn to play my<br />
saxophone better and include it when I<br />
sing. When I sing, I put my whole being<br />
into what I am singing because I want<br />
the audience to believe and feel the<br />
message in the music.<br />
Pieces of music I recommend/love<br />
The Easter version of Leonard<br />
Cohen's song “Hallelujah.” It is a<br />
classic, many people love this song<br />
and they sing it all over the world.<br />
The same for “O Happy Day” and “Amazing Grace.”<br />
I recently recorded “Sometimes I Feel Live A Motherless<br />
Child” and I would love to share it with the world.<br />
The song “He's An On Time God” brings out the tiger in me<br />
and I love it when the audience goes wild when I sing it. I<br />
love a lot of the old classics.<br />
GETTING TO KNOW BEVERLY<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself that<br />
not many people know. When I am done<br />
singing, I just want to run off the stage and<br />
hide. I actually sometimes get a bit shy when<br />
people applaud.<br />
If you could perform with, or meet, one<br />
musician, who would it be? I would have loved<br />
to meet Whitney Houston. She was a great<br />
34<br />
singer and it would have been an honor to sing<br />
with her. Mariah Carey is also one of my all time<br />
favorite singers. I would love to sing a duet with<br />
her but I would have to sing lower notes. Her<br />
voice is outstanding.<br />
The most unusual place I have listened to music<br />
was… I traveled to Santiago, Chile, on a<br />
medical mission trip and a popular singer was<br />
doing a concert at the tennis stadium. I knew<br />
one of the sponsors. When<br />
I arrived at the stadium, I<br />
was asked to also sing<br />
before over 5000 people<br />
and it was impromptu. I did<br />
quite well.<br />
What are some of the<br />
things you would love to<br />
get better at and things<br />
you would like to stop<br />
doing? I would love to get<br />
better at doing runs and<br />
remembering song lyrics. I<br />
would love to stop getting<br />
nervous when performing<br />
a new song because I<br />
sometimes think that I will<br />
forget the lyrics.
Switzerland: A Life Of Jazz<br />
I grew up in a family of five children. My parents<br />
were hotel owners in Bern, Switzerland and Greece.<br />
At our villa, they regularly hosted guests from all<br />
over the world, which encouraged us children to<br />
use many different languages from as early as five<br />
years old. Besides going to school, I learned to play<br />
classical piano.<br />
But then I discovered Bill Haley's “Rock Around The<br />
Clock,” which my parents brought back for us from<br />
a trip to the USA in 1956. In the mid-sixties I heard<br />
Erroll Garner perform live for the first time. From<br />
then, this was "my music." Erroll had such a distinct<br />
way of playing, after the first few notes one<br />
recognized him instantly.<br />
After graduating with a degree in interior architecture, I started my first job with an architect<br />
who specialized in hotel developments in Copenhagen, Denmark. There, in 1969, I heard Miles<br />
Davis life at Tivoli Concert Hall. Then, in the early seventies I lived for four years in Singapore,<br />
where I founded my first own company. Then I<br />
moved to Hong Kong, where my new design<br />
company developed hotel projects all over the<br />
world for the next 25 years. Over these years, my<br />
interest in classical music diminished and was<br />
replaced by the love of jazz. The more I listened<br />
to the various styles in jazz and was surrounded<br />
by top jazz musicians talking about their music,<br />
the more profound comprehension I acquired of<br />
the genre itself. I consider myself extremely lucky<br />
to have received such privileges almost my<br />
entire life.<br />
In 1990, I returned to my hometown of Bern, and<br />
my husband and I bought the 8000 m² property,<br />
Innere Enge, Bern which today has become the<br />
Unique Jazz Hotel. It has a total of 26<br />
guestrooms, as well as the Brasserie Josephine,<br />
the world- renowned Marians Jazzroom, the<br />
Parc Café and a minigolf course.<br />
For many years, my husband has invited<br />
international jazz legends such as Oscar<br />
Peterson, Lionel Hampton, Ahmad Jamal, Clark<br />
MARIANNE GAUER ZURBRÜGG<br />
American <strong>Women</strong>’s Club of Bern, Switzerland<br />
From: Bern, Switzerland<br />
Lives: Bern, Switzerland<br />
35
Terry, Dizzy Gillespie, Wynton Marsalis and many more to perform at his Jazzfestival Bern. We still<br />
continue with our involvement in the world of jazz to this day by hosting over 350 concerts per<br />
year at our Jazzroom, bringing today's most famous jazz musicians to Bern. We are also thrilled<br />
to discover young jazz talents. For example, during our International Jazzfestival Bern (March to<br />
May), we offer a platform for students from the New School and Juilliard in New York - and<br />
more recently, Berklee College of Music - a chance to perform too.<br />
I have been the happiest "hostess" to all the musicians, while my husband, Hans Zurbrügg, who<br />
started the Jazzfestival Bern in the first place 43 years ago – and now his son Benny, who has<br />
been in charge for the last 20 years – have been the main organizers.<br />
Jazz music is fascinating. You can only learn it by listening, not by simply reading notes. It<br />
changes all the time, and there are so many creative ways it is being played. I am continually<br />
fascinated by the constant innovative improvisation of jazz music – an instrumental<br />
conversation on stage between musicians. There is just never a dull moment for the attentive<br />
listener! Those "blue notes" or those "split second delayed notes" which create the most unique<br />
tensions, or the "whisper of a sound" to the most "powerful tone:" all, at times, giving me goose<br />
bumps all over!<br />
GETTING TO KNOW<br />
MARIANNE<br />
Tell us something<br />
interesting about yourself<br />
that not many people<br />
know. I was in China in<br />
1968 during the Cultural<br />
Revolution – four years<br />
before President Richard<br />
Nixon went.<br />
The most unusual place I<br />
have listened to music<br />
was… It was at the 2006<br />
Jazzfestival Bern, the<br />
Blues & Soul summit at<br />
the big hall called the<br />
Kursaal. "King Solomon" Burke (one of the<br />
founding fathers of soul music) asked for a<br />
king's throne on stage. His weight was between<br />
300 and 400 pounds. My husband<br />
commissioned me with this task.<br />
possible. Lights on : "King Solomon" remained<br />
seated in his XXL wheelchair covered by a red<br />
blanket; to his left and right were vases with 100<br />
red roses. The concert started and thankfully<br />
was a huge success !!<br />
After quite some search, I found a very large<br />
throne. It was an antique piece, and I had to<br />
guarantee that I return it all in one piece. It was<br />
transported to the hall with the greatest of care<br />
and placed on stage. Solomon's daughters<br />
insisted it needed to be fastened on the floor so<br />
that their father would not fall over. It wasn't a<br />
simple thing to do without using screws!<br />
Finally we found ways, and everybody was<br />
happy. Evening came, and one minute prior to<br />
Solomon going on stage, he refused to sit on<br />
this throne! We had to dismantle it as quickly as<br />
36<br />
If we looked in your purse, what three things<br />
would we find that would tell us something<br />
about you? My Mini Countryman key, my purse<br />
and a quote from an unknown writer :<br />
* Take your time to be friendly, it is the gate to<br />
happiness.<br />
* Take your time to dream, it is the way to the<br />
stars.<br />
* Take your time to love, it is the real zest for life.<br />
* Take your time to be happy, it is the music of<br />
your soul.
Germany: A Musical Teacher<br />
37<br />
I was born in Ballycastle, Northern Ireland. I was the<br />
only daughter and we lived on a farm. For my parents,<br />
married in 1949, it was a challenge economically as<br />
the UK recovered from rationing and the scars of World<br />
War II. There were few luxuries. The installation of<br />
running water was the first priority followed by<br />
electricity and central heating much later when I was<br />
approaching my teenage years.<br />
Family life was happy and my mother was an<br />
extraordinary cook and hostess. Social interaction was<br />
mostly with our cousins and extended family. My<br />
mother was a competent pianist and singer and well<br />
known as a church organist and choir director. For me<br />
personally, music was an integral part of life. Hearing<br />
my mother sing was particularly emotional for me and some of my earliest memories included<br />
singing in the children’s choir in our local church. Piano lessons featured too. I was more<br />
dedicated to practice than my brothers, who had other distractions on the farm.<br />
I wanted to teach from the day I entered school and sure enough, after secondary education I<br />
enrolled to pursue my dream at Queen’s University, Belfast. In the 60s, music as an academic<br />
subject was in its infancy in secondary education, but credit to my school, the headmaster<br />
found a solution to ensure I could study music as an academic subject. I ended up studying<br />
music and mathematics alongside education at university; playing cello in the college<br />
orchestra; singing solo and choral parts in Gilbert and Sullivan operas; singing second soprano in<br />
the madrigal group, and I had the privilege of conducting this group at the Galway Choral<br />
Festival in my final year.<br />
In addition to the<br />
expansion of knowledge,<br />
we had practical<br />
experience teaching in<br />
schools during each year<br />
of study. My first teaching<br />
post was in a challenging<br />
girls’ school in north<br />
Belfast. I can only<br />
describe it as a real<br />
baptism by fire and a test<br />
of resilience and<br />
perseverance to inspire<br />
teenage girls about<br />
classical music when<br />
MARGARET HILDITCH<br />
Munich International <strong>Women</strong>’s Club,<br />
Germany<br />
From: Northern Ireland<br />
Lives: Between England and Bavaria
they had more interest in the 70s<br />
pop group “The Bay City Rollers.”<br />
We have recently settled in the<br />
Cotswolds to be close to one<br />
daughter after an itinerant life of<br />
forty years. Initially during my<br />
husband’s military pilot training in<br />
the RAF, we moved around<br />
England, Scotland and Wales.<br />
Then in the 90s we spent time in<br />
Maryland, USA, at the Naval Test<br />
Pilot school, then were posted to<br />
Bavaria for three years. After this<br />
we went to Munich where we<br />
clocked up another eleven years<br />
before a final two years living in<br />
Saudi Arabia.<br />
Right now, my musical skills are percolating in readiness for a new challenge. This will include<br />
the musical development of our four grandchildren. Prior to our first German assignment, I was<br />
a full time Director of Music in a comprehensive school in Wiltshire. In Munich, I conducted the<br />
Youth Choir in the church and introduced the idea of an orchestra that included all levels of<br />
performance. My time in Saudi Arabia was greatly enhanced and inspired through teaching<br />
twenty young musicians on our compound and acting as accompanist to young singers and<br />
adults taking Associated Board examinations. Since our retirement in April <strong>2018</strong>, we have<br />
enjoyed connecting with live musical performances in Cheltenham and beyond. I love being<br />
“home” where my grand piano adorns our living room and I can play when time permits. I am<br />
watching and waiting to see how I contribute musically in the future. “Use it or lose it” is my<br />
mantra. My teaching career has been diverse but I am proud of the fact that I have been able<br />
to inspire and encourage many young people to stay committed to the challenge of learning<br />
to play a musical instrument.<br />
38<br />
My first piano teacher was inspirational, and I<br />
excelled under his tutelage. I made my debut<br />
as a performer at Coleraine Music and Drama<br />
Festival. I had no idea what to expect. To my<br />
complete surprise, I won the trophy for the best<br />
performance. A move to a different teacher,<br />
who taught at my high school, proved to be<br />
good logistically but not so academically. I<br />
progressed as a pianist but not as a performer.<br />
During our time in USA, my Canadian friend, a<br />
flautist, encouraged me to have lessons with<br />
Brian Ganz, a professional pianist and tutor at<br />
Maryland University. The nine lessons during that<br />
year were like finding a pot of gold. As an adult,<br />
I proved that I could perform a wide repertoire<br />
of classical music. I use the memories of this<br />
time to inspire my desire to perform and keep<br />
improving my skills.<br />
At university, I discovered that I was a little “fish”<br />
in a great big “musical” pond. Musicians share<br />
such diversity in learning, creativity and<br />
performance. Musicians cannot always
measure their success alongside the musical abilities of their peers. Often musicians are judged<br />
by their ability to perform and little is known about the hard work and creativity that brings their<br />
success to fruition. By the time I worked in my most challenging and ultimately dream job as a<br />
Director of Music in Wiltshire, I realized that the musical success of all my pupils required me to<br />
have a team of instrumental experts to support, advise and inspire all pupils regardless of<br />
academic ability. Consequently, there was never an empty seat at my annual concerts themed<br />
with drama excerpts to showcase the best of my Rock groups, the Windband, the Choir and<br />
instrumental ensembles. This successful formula raised the profile of the school in the local area so<br />
much that parents were choosing our school for their musical child in preference to others. The<br />
highest accolade during my career there was the prize for the best performance of my senior<br />
Windband at the Salisbury Schools’ Music festival.<br />
I am very proud and happy that my musical skills<br />
have been an inspiration to so many. I think of<br />
Jessica, a six-year-old, who was most inspired<br />
when I discovered she loved to sing as she<br />
played; then Ross, a very competent and mature<br />
young man who discovered the need to<br />
practice; Jarvis, who liked to improvise, and the<br />
boys who delighted in performing the Star Wars<br />
theme in our farewell concert and last but not<br />
least Jade, who wrote a poem about the<br />
environment, performing it as a song with guitar<br />
accompaniment. Elle surprised me most of all by<br />
mastering the walking bass of her piece called C<br />
Jam Blues.<br />
Music breaks down barriers where other methods<br />
fail. It can arouse memories, calm the soul and be<br />
the inspiration to others to pursue their dreams. It<br />
is important to hear live performances and<br />
interact with other musicians to realize potential<br />
and improve performance skills. When I hear a<br />
haunting melody or a masterful performance, I<br />
am compelled to listen and appreciate the<br />
moment. I cannot read a book and listen to<br />
music at the some time. Good music engages the brain to appreciate the skill of the composer.<br />
Pieces of music I recommend/love<br />
Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto. I love the melodic and harmonic structure of the slow<br />
movement in contrast to the depth and power of the romantic orchestral sound.<br />
“Blue Skies” sung by Kiri Te Kanawa, a truly wonderful vocalist. This song reminds me of the<br />
sunny blue sky days we enjoyed in Maryland, USA, in 1991.<br />
Franz Schubert’s Impromptu in G flat Major. I performed this piece in my teens. It is<br />
technically demanding with rich harmonies and flowing chordal sequences.<br />
“Hotel California” by the Eagles. This group is an inspiration to all guitarists. My youngest<br />
brother found his musical talent playing guitar. This piece is layered with wonderful<br />
harmonic sequences and countermelodies and yet the<br />
clarity and sensitivity in performance is on the same plane as<br />
some classical pieces.<br />
“Silent Night.” To think that this melody was composed in a<br />
little church is magical and inspirational. It is the best loved<br />
Christmas carol in Germany and is sung unaccompanied in a<br />
candlelit atmosphere. A true reminder of precious times with<br />
family and friends especially at Christmas.<br />
39
GETTING TO KNOW MARGARET<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself<br />
that not many people know. I am married to<br />
an ex-RAF pilot and test pilot and have loved<br />
every flying opportunity during our married<br />
life. I have looped the loop and performed a<br />
barrel roll in a Cap 10 (a small aerobatic<br />
aircraft flown by the trainee test pilots during<br />
their course.) In Wiltshire when my husband<br />
was Officer Commanding the Empire Test Pilot<br />
school at Boscombe Down, I had a wonderful<br />
flight in a Luscombe, watching my husband<br />
and a colleague simulating a “dogfight” in<br />
two SE5, WW1 aircraft. Two years ago, I had a<br />
magical flight in a motor glider in the Bavarian<br />
Alps and this past summer, I experienced my<br />
first paragliding trip in the Austrian Alps.<br />
If you could perform with one musician/group<br />
of musicians who would it/they be? I would<br />
love to be the conductor of a large choral<br />
event with orchestral backing in the Royal<br />
Albert Hall in London. I had the opportunity to<br />
sing there early in my married life and it was<br />
electrifying to be part of a huge choral group<br />
performing Handel’s Messiah. I would love to<br />
conduct a performance with David Garrett,<br />
violinist, who has fused so many genres from<br />
classical to rock appealing to all ages.<br />
The most unusual place I have performed<br />
or listened to music was… in a bar in a<br />
Galway pub. Standing on top of a low<br />
table after a choral competition of all the<br />
university choirs in Ireland, the spirit of<br />
performance was very much alive and<br />
each choir took turns to sing. One<br />
madrigal in our repertoire was known by<br />
everyone, so with drinks in hand we<br />
celebrated the joy of music. Sharing this<br />
unforgettable moment of friendship has<br />
reminded me so often how music<br />
transcends all divides; cultural, racial,<br />
political and religious.<br />
40
Spain: The “Singing Housing Specialist”<br />
GWEN PERRY<br />
Barcelona <strong>Women</strong>’s Network, Spain<br />
From: North Carolina, USA<br />
Lives: Sant Andreu de Llavaneres, Nr<br />
Barcelona, Spain<br />
I grew up in North Carolina, the eldest of five children.<br />
My childhood was happy and music was everywhere:<br />
in the church, at home and on television. I was<br />
addicted to Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Louis<br />
Armstrong movies and others.<br />
I left home at age 18 to go to college. My family never<br />
encouraged me to sing, so the first thing I did at<br />
college was to form a 4-member girls’ singing group.<br />
We were a hit. In the mid-sixties we opened the shows<br />
of artists like Gladys Knight and the Pips, the<br />
Commodores, Curtis Mayfield and others. We were<br />
known as the Angels.<br />
After college I went to live in Washington, D.C. My<br />
profession had very little to do with my BS in Business Education. I started off as a file clerk in the<br />
Department of HUD, went into their Intern Program and became a Program Analyst,<br />
moonlighting on the side as a jazz singer in and around the Washington Metropolitan area. I was<br />
known as the “singing housing specialist.” When my marriage of 5 years went on the rocks I<br />
decided to take a leave from my GS-12 Program Analyst position to pursue my passion for music.<br />
I left the states because there were more possibilities for me in Europe. I came to Palma de<br />
Mallorca 42 years ago; moved around in the Mediterranean between Spain, central Europe,<br />
Egypt and Italy until, whilst performing on Costa Cruises, I met my Catalan husband. I was<br />
already living in Catalonia and have been married since 2004. My official name is Gwendolyn<br />
Gilmore de Comas.<br />
I will be singing until the day<br />
that I leave this world, or as<br />
long as God gives me voice<br />
and strength. Music for me is<br />
medicine, it’s magic, it’s<br />
happiness and I love sharing<br />
that with anyone who wishes to<br />
listen. I am currently preparing<br />
the recording of my next CD,<br />
which should be released<br />
summer 2019.<br />
In the beginning I was<br />
influenced most of all by Judy<br />
Garland, Ella Fitzgerald and<br />
Frank Sinatra among others.<br />
41
I consider myself a female crooner. Although I sing jazz, swing, blues, rhythm and blues,<br />
standards and ballads, I feel more comfortable with jazz and swing. I would have had a ball<br />
during the big band era.<br />
Music is medicine for me. Music gives me a natural high. I can go to another, higher place when<br />
I am performing. It takes me a few minutes to come down to earth once I am finished. I enjoy<br />
myself and try to get my audience involved on the trip with me. When I listen to music I meditate<br />
and completely relax. I seldom attend public concerts. The buzz of people talking distracts my<br />
attention to what is happening with or through the music.<br />
Today the industry has become so<br />
business-like. Even though I’ll listen to all<br />
styles to understand and appreciate, I<br />
can’t wrap my brain around some of<br />
the modern techniques, like rap and<br />
hip-hop. I guess I am just a romantic.<br />
I am proud of how I have always used<br />
my music in solidarity with groups or<br />
people in need. I love aiding through<br />
my music and using my influence as<br />
someone well-known. In March 2012 I<br />
was given the European Gold<br />
Distinction Award for Achievements as<br />
an International Singer, Humanitarian<br />
and Producer.<br />
Pieces of music I recommend/love<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
“My Way” because the lyrics tell a story, somewhat like mine.<br />
“Everything Must Change” by Stevie Wonder, because that’s how life is - all things change,<br />
nothing stays the same.<br />
“What A Wonderful World” because this truly is a wonderful world, even with all of its<br />
craziness.<br />
“I Love Being Here With You” because that is what I dedicate to my audiences to let them<br />
know how much they mean to me.<br />
Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” because it is a beautiful melody with profound lyrics that give me<br />
a sense of peace.<br />
42
GETTING TO KNOW GWEN<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself<br />
that not many people know. Even though I am<br />
basically reserved, I am an open book. I have<br />
a sense of humor that sometimes sneaks itself<br />
out of me. I love to cook and I have a<br />
collection of more than 200 elephants. I sing in<br />
nine languages, five of which I speak.<br />
the level of my other languages and learn to<br />
cook more like Master Chef. I would stop<br />
giving all of myself to others, leaving little or<br />
nothing for me. I must learn to say NO!<br />
If you could perform with one musician who<br />
would it be? That has already happened. I<br />
opened for my idol, Miss Ella Fitzgerald, in Italy<br />
in May of 1986. I was without words. I would<br />
love to do a duet either with Frank Sinatra or<br />
Barbara Streisand.<br />
The most unusual place I have performed or<br />
listened to music was… the venue was the<br />
Nightclub Archipelago in Harare, Zimbabwe. I<br />
was there one year after the fall of Rhodesia.<br />
This private nightclub was owned and run by a<br />
Greek Zimbabwean who was pursued by the<br />
Mugabe government because he was white<br />
and I was living and performing in an<br />
ambience of reversed apartheid. It was an<br />
interesting engagement and I was invited<br />
back during the same year.<br />
What are some of the things you would love to<br />
get better at and things you would like to stop<br />
doing? I would love to perfect my Catalan to<br />
Gwen with Ella Fitzgerald<br />
“Music is an extraordinary<br />
vehicle for expressing<br />
emotions - very powerful<br />
emotions. That’s what<br />
draws people to it.”<br />
– ANNIE LENNOX<br />
43
USA: Dreaming of Accordians<br />
RICK CHIZMADIA<br />
FAUSA and American <strong>Women</strong>’s Club of Zurich<br />
From: Detroit, Michigan<br />
Lives: Cincinnati, Ohio<br />
44<br />
I was born in Detroit, Michigan and my early years<br />
were spent in the Hamtramck Polish area of Detroit,<br />
and then at 8 we moved to the suburb of Warren,<br />
which consisted of mainly Polish and Italian families. I<br />
am of Polish–Hungarian decent and 2 nd generation<br />
American. Though my father is Hungarian, my<br />
mother’s culture dominated my life. At the age of 6<br />
my mother enrolled me in Polish folk dancing<br />
classes. I absolutely loved it and excelled at it.<br />
While in dance classes I was exposed to an<br />
accordion. I was fascinated by its sound and look. I<br />
loved how the bellows went in and out and the<br />
diamond pattern on it changed as they did. I kept<br />
asking my mom if I could take lessons. Her answer<br />
was always the same – “no you are taking dance lessons.” I really wanted to play the accordion<br />
and every night I would look out the window for the first star and say “I wish I may, I wish I might<br />
have the wish I wish tonight: I wish for an accordion!”<br />
One day my mom overheard me, and realized how seriously I was wanting to play it. She<br />
explained to me that if I wanted to take up the accordion, then I had to give up dancing. She<br />
wasn’t going to be driving the 10 miles<br />
back to Polish area of town twice a<br />
week when she had three other<br />
children to take care of. I learned it very<br />
quickly and excelled at it. I have always<br />
been musically inclined.<br />
My best babysitter was a HiFi record<br />
player which I would dance to and<br />
listen to music all day long as a toddler.<br />
At the studio where I took lessons, they<br />
had an accordion band program which<br />
I joined at the age of 9. I was sent to<br />
compete in the American Guild of<br />
Music competitions with the band, and<br />
playing solos. I started winning many<br />
awards until I graduated high school. In<br />
5 th grade I was introduced to the band<br />
program and wanted to learn the<br />
trumpet. We did not have a lot of<br />
money so my mother said that I could<br />
play my grandfather’s clarinet. We<br />
discovered that it was an A clarinet and
not a B flat clarinet that was taught in the<br />
schools. Mom would only let me play the<br />
A clarinet because we couldn’t afford<br />
another instrument. That was a decision<br />
that would come back to haunt me later<br />
in life.<br />
When I turned 15, I joined a polka band<br />
and played in all the area Polish festivals<br />
and lots of weddings. I did this for 12 years<br />
into adulthood. At 17 I started giving<br />
accordion lessons to beginners. Music<br />
was such an important part of my life, I<br />
wanted nothing more than to play. I went<br />
to the local community college to study<br />
music to become a public school<br />
teacher. I discovered while being there<br />
that they did not accept the accordion<br />
as an instrument in their programs so I had<br />
to learn piano. Again, my parents were<br />
adamant that they could not afford<br />
another instrument.<br />
My professor saw that I was a natural at music theory and ended up having a conference with<br />
my parents and convinced them that I should take piano lessons so I could be admitted in a<br />
program. They bought me a used piano and at 18 I began piano lessons. During those first years<br />
I needed extra money to get me through college so I applied to be a cashier at Kmart so that I<br />
could afford a car to get me back and forth to school. Jobs were scarce at that time, and that<br />
was the only job opening that I saw. I was told by the HR department that men could not be<br />
cashiers, only women could. I ended up filing a grievance with the Kmart Corp. threatening to<br />
file a lawsuit. I was being discriminated against for being a man. My best friend’s father was vice<br />
president of the company and when he found out, he worked with the company to change the<br />
policy. This was my beginning as an activist.<br />
45<br />
Because they were forced to hire me, the<br />
managers in the store were unhappy with the<br />
situation and kept doing things to me to make me<br />
quit. They made me give up my teaching job,<br />
because it was “moonlighting.” They would pull me<br />
off the cash register and make me do things such<br />
as clean the grease traps in the kitchen, and even<br />
scrub down the bathrooms and paint them.<br />
Eventually they fired me and I filed a grievance<br />
with the labor relations board, won, and received<br />
immediate unemployment. In the meantime,<br />
because of all the energy that I had spent fighting<br />
them in work, my studies suffered and I dropped<br />
out of school.<br />
Being a musician was most important to me so I<br />
started to teach music privately again and<br />
established the Great Lakes Regional Contest for<br />
the American Guild of Music, a contest I am still in<br />
charge of today. I eventually went back to school<br />
and received a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Music<br />
Education. Another thing that I did while in early
adulthood was leave the polka band and go on the staff at a big accordion school and play<br />
in their 40 piece accordion band. This band would win national titles and we would tour Europe<br />
every other summer and play in big concert halls, churches and piazzas. This is where I first<br />
became a global citizen. We would stay in people’s homes and youth hostels and made<br />
friends with other accordionists from around the world.<br />
I was running the music contests and expanded them from 100 students in the first contest to<br />
2100 students that would come from all over the Great Lake states. After my first contest, I was<br />
elected to the board of directors of American Guild of Music (AGM) and ran their contests<br />
around the eastern half of the USA. I have been doing that for 42 years and became their<br />
executive director 5 years ago. At the same time as my involvement in AGM I grew my student<br />
base from 25 students a week to 125 in private and group lessons and went back to school to<br />
earn a degree so that I could go on to get a Masters degree in Arts Administration.<br />
While I was working on my bachelors, I<br />
met my husband Richard and gave up<br />
the dream of the masters in Arts<br />
Administration to stay with him and<br />
concentrate on my students and the<br />
music contests. I ended up getting a<br />
masters in Multimedia and<br />
Communications instead when he had his<br />
first assignment in mid-Michigan. In 2006<br />
he was transferred to Zurich so I gave up<br />
my music studio and created an online<br />
registration process for the contest so that<br />
I could continue to run the contests while<br />
living abroad. Thus I would come back to<br />
the USA every three months and run three<br />
contests a year and visit family at the<br />
same time. Whilst abroad I studied the<br />
music of Switzerland and France. Now in<br />
Cincinnati I sing in the Cincinnati Men’s<br />
Chorus, and play 23 gigs a year with the<br />
accordion band “Squeeze Play” where<br />
we play in nursing homes, retirement<br />
centers and various Oktoberfests. I also<br />
teach a handful of students the piano.<br />
We plan to retire in 4 years, travel in the Airstream and take cruises and travel the world. I have<br />
taken my accordion with me on the camping trips and performed at the campsites with other<br />
musicians and on a recent cruise to Alaska, I joined the cruise choir and entered the Voice of<br />
the Ocean competition where I made it all the way to the finals. I would expect that I would do<br />
more of the same in the years to come.<br />
Music unites us: We can differ politically, economically and culturally and it has the power to<br />
heal us. I can go into the room, not speaking the same language – but still communicate<br />
through music. I have a yearning to learn about other cultures because of this. My music is my<br />
legacy – I am most proud of how I have touched and shaped thousands of young people’s<br />
lives through my teaching and administration of the AGM music contests. Students reach out to<br />
me via Facebook or they return to the contests and tell me how important that I was in their<br />
lives and helped make them successful. I am proud of having achieved 50 years of<br />
membership in the AGM, something that only 3 other people have done in its 117 year history. I<br />
am also extremely proud that I am the longest serving person at the head of the organization.<br />
46
I am currently the 1 st VP of FAUSA which<br />
means I organize all communications for<br />
FAUSA and annual meeting production.<br />
FAWCO offers me the opportunity to meet<br />
and network with other global citizens like<br />
me and FAWCO helps empower women,<br />
not only US citizens but underprivileged<br />
women around the world. The foundation<br />
work is very important and that empowers<br />
me to remain a part of FAWCO even<br />
though I have been back in the USA for<br />
almost 10 years now.<br />
Pieces of music I recommend/love<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Anything Depeche Mode.<br />
Anything Beethoven as I have always<br />
related to his compositions and<br />
admired that he wrote most of them<br />
as a deaf man.<br />
Any polka.<br />
French musette music especially “Retour Des<br />
Hirondelles.“<br />
To sing – “Love Don’t Need a Reason” or any<br />
Broadway standard.<br />
GETTING TO KNOW RICK<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself<br />
that not many people know. I am on the<br />
national board of directors of the Human<br />
Rights Campaign and have worked over 27<br />
years with this organization, helping to raise<br />
over 3 million dollars to fight discrimination for<br />
GLBTQ people in the USA and around the<br />
USA. The flame to stand up and fight for my<br />
rights and the rights of others started in school<br />
where I was constantly bullied and almost<br />
raped in the gym locker room for being who I<br />
am. Because it happened to me, I have<br />
always stood up for those who are bullied and<br />
abused. At an early age I discovered that<br />
women were not treated equally and I never<br />
understood that. I have always looked at us<br />
as humans with no differences.<br />
If you could perform with one group of<br />
musicians who would they be? Hands down I<br />
would love to meet Depeche Mode and<br />
perform with them. They have been my go-to<br />
group since the 80s. I find their music is<br />
infectious, singable and very danceable and<br />
also avant-garde.<br />
The most unusual place I have performed or<br />
listened to music was… The most unusual<br />
place I have performed was for a dance for<br />
deaf people. We had to turn our speakers<br />
and amplifiers down on the floor. The room<br />
was utter quiet when we were not playing.<br />
But when we would start playing the<br />
attendees would dance to the vibrations of<br />
the sound. That performance made me open<br />
my eyes that a handicap does not and should<br />
not hold you back and made me appreciate<br />
those less fortunate than me.<br />
What are some of the things you would love to<br />
get better at and things you would like to stop<br />
doing? Getting rid of the musician messiness<br />
and artistic never being absolutely happy with<br />
each creation. I would like to stop<br />
procrastinating.<br />
47
A Letter to My Master Teacher<br />
48<br />
Dear Professor:<br />
How are you, and your children (all grown up by now)?<br />
I hope, well. I am doing fine. I still live in France with my<br />
husband Jean. We have three children – a 14-year-old girl,<br />
and two boys, 7 and 9. It has been 23 years since you gave<br />
me my last piano lesson. Can you believe that? So much has<br />
changed in our world since then: I just “googled” you and<br />
printed out your Wikipedia article. Imagine that!<br />
You are probably wondering why I am writing you now.<br />
Well, among other things, I am working hard to complete a<br />
project required to receive my TEFL (Teaching English as a<br />
Foreign Language) certificate. Its title is: “Writing your<br />
Learning Memoirs: Learning to write English by reflecting on<br />
the ‘Master Teachers’ who have inspired your past learning.”<br />
As part of the project, I am writing my own Learning<br />
Memoirs. You are one of my “Master Teachers,” and I want<br />
to express this in a personal letter.<br />
From time to time, little events trigger my memory of the two years I spent at the university<br />
as a Piano Performance major. For me, that time transcended everyday life for I was<br />
completely fulfilled in body, mind, heart and soul.<br />
Of course, my soul was happiest my wedding day and the day my first child was born.<br />
And there was the summer I spent serving God in the Peloponnesus in Greece, where I slept in<br />
a whitewashed bungalow 20 meters from the beach with 15 teenagers and a fellow counsellor,<br />
and we woke to a ringing Church bell and the scent of bougainvillea wafting through the<br />
morning breeze. For my body, there is the happiness of first love such as I once felt for a young<br />
soldier, holding on to his waist and riding down the highway, my hair streaming behind me,<br />
ending up at an empty beach in late afternoon to discuss poetry and what it takes to be<br />
happy, before swimming and diving through the rocks and then hugging each other as the sun<br />
set. My mind was ecstatic when in the depth of my master degree’s tripartite business/<br />
international studies/languages curriculum. And my heart is at peace in the arms of my<br />
husband and with the soft touch of my children. Yet the dedication to musical and personal<br />
learning, beauty and passion, self-discovery and sharing with other musicians, which took place<br />
at the university, for me, fulfilled all of me at the same time – it fell just under the spiritual.<br />
Professor, there is something I have<br />
wanted to tell you for quite some time<br />
now: You played an important role in<br />
my personal growth. I saw you every<br />
Monday in Performance Class and<br />
once a week for a private lesson. You<br />
would gently ask me to play the pieces<br />
that I had been working on, and you<br />
would then venture respectful, at times<br />
even tender, feedback, with<br />
suggestions for dealing with difficult<br />
passages and interpretation, and<br />
compliments on my playing when<br />
merited. I felt free to ask you questions,<br />
penetrating questions, and until my
appetite had been satiated, and you patiently responded, with your heart and mind, sharing all<br />
that you had experienced. Your stable personality and honest outlook on life assured me that<br />
you would tell the truth and never make fun of my efforts.<br />
As any piano teacher and student know, the relationship is tight. The student is exposing her<br />
innermost self to the teacher, who in turn has the responsibility to take this seriously and in the<br />
spirit of confidentiality and trust. To attain this, the teacher must also expose his vulnerabilities.<br />
Music school was the prelude to the fugue that is my life. And among the talented professors at<br />
the university who opened the world of music up to me ‒ Piano Pedagogy, Music History,<br />
Conducting, Modern Dance, Music Theory and Ear Training, and Piano Performance – you were<br />
the one who gave me the most.<br />
Professor, you may remember me as an academically confident and socially self-assured<br />
young 20-something. You certainly would also recall my insecurity where my talent as a pianist<br />
was concerned. Either I doomed myself from the start by comparing myself to the more<br />
technically gifted pianists at the University, or I had a harshly realistic understanding of my<br />
limitations and strengths and judged that they would fall short. I remember a time when this<br />
insecurity actually paralysed me. The final exam in Piano Pedagogy instructed us to write an<br />
essay about our hypothetical rise as a concert pianist by describing the pedagogical influences<br />
that had allowed this to happen. I was incapable of letting my imagination run free because I<br />
was somehow afraid I’d be publicly accused of telling lies if I were to imagine myself as a great<br />
pianist. I remember this clearly because at this time in my life, I wished more than anything else<br />
to be a world-class pianist.<br />
Remember the day I asked<br />
you if we could talk about my<br />
future? We agreed that I would<br />
make us a picnic lunch, and we<br />
would eat outside. I think we ate<br />
shrimp salad sandwiches, and I<br />
think it was April. I recall passing<br />
your wife in the hallway, just<br />
before meeting you, and how<br />
lucky I thought she was to be<br />
spending her life with you – with<br />
your kind way and brilliant mind –<br />
and she told me that she hoped I<br />
would find your advice helpful.<br />
That day I had Rainer Maria<br />
Rilke and his “First Letter to a<br />
Young Poet” on my mind. I<br />
quote: “There is only one thing<br />
you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it<br />
has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would<br />
have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of<br />
your night: must I write?” Of course, my question was, “must I be a pianist?” To be honest, I knew<br />
that I was too weak and cowardly and scared to answer this in the affirmative. But I wished that I<br />
could have.<br />
We met at your piano studio and walked out to the front steps of the music building and<br />
sat near one of the white columns, and you asked me what I wanted from life…. I told you lots of<br />
things, the desire to go abroad, study other subjects, and to keep music in my life. I didn’t ask<br />
you point blank whether or not I could “make it as a pianist.” Maybe I should have. I know now I<br />
could have. Of course, I could have. There are many ways to be a pianist. I wouldn’t have had<br />
to be a concert pianist or a university piano professor ‒ I could have been a teacher like I am<br />
now, happily teaching piano, but a finer performer and a more knowledgeable musician.<br />
49
Today I write my learning memoirs to find out if I am a writer. Unlike 23 years ago, my<br />
question is not, “do you think I can make it as a writer?” I don’t need to ask you, Professor, or<br />
anyone else, because I now understand Rilke, and in my most silent hour of the night, I know I<br />
must write. The saddest thing for me would be to die before I got to write. And so I write.<br />
What I realize now is that what I love even more than the piano is self-expression. Piano<br />
allowed me to express my emotions. Today, I teach piano, but I no longer practice and perform<br />
difficult pieces. With my limited free time it cannot be a priority. I am addicted to the piano<br />
teacher/student relationship. I still find it to be incredibly fulfilling, no matter which end you are<br />
on. For various reasons, I have turned to writing as my self-expression. It is really all the same, just<br />
the techniques are different.<br />
Professor, my mind has always found the most precious gift to be those interactions with<br />
great and sensitive minds. Thank you for having made yours available to me. As you can see, it<br />
has made a difference. I will be forever grateful.<br />
With my warmest wishes always, Your Student<br />
Jane Mobille is an ICF Professional Certified Coach, as well as a facilitator, editor, writer, and pianist.<br />
Previously, she had a 10-year career in telecommunications and as many again in music. Jane runs a<br />
coaching practice for individuals and organizations representing a diversity of ages, cultures, and<br />
professions. She is a member of AAWE, serving as editor of its quarterly magazine. She also authors a<br />
"Teen Coach" column at online magazine INSPIRELLE. Jane and her French husband have a 24-yearold<br />
daughter, and two teenage sons.<br />
“I feel like B sides<br />
(of records) are<br />
always better, no<br />
matter whose<br />
record it is.”<br />
– ALICIA KEYS<br />
50
Germany: Musical Theater Brought to Life<br />
KRISSY DORN<br />
American International <strong>Women</strong>’s Club of<br />
Cologne, Germany<br />
From: Bavaria, raised in Ludwigshafen, Germany<br />
Lives: Cologne, Germany<br />
I grew up in Ludwigshafen/Rhein as my parents’ only<br />
child. My family loved classical music, but no one really<br />
played an instrument or sang, except for my Dad’s<br />
mother, who was a pianist by training, even though she<br />
never performed. My Mom has a beautiful voice, but it<br />
took her decades and a lot of persuasive work from my<br />
part for her to finally use it and join a choir; she’s 80 now<br />
and still sings in it.<br />
As a teenager I taught myself how to play guitar when I<br />
realized that I liked American folk, rock and blues much<br />
more than Mozart (I still like playing an occasional<br />
Chopin nocturne on the piano though). After someone<br />
told me I sounded like her, Joan Baez became my great<br />
role model and I would copy her singing style for a while.<br />
This didn’t prevent me from joining a delirious punk band with the ineffable name “Agent<br />
Orange,” but that's what you do when you're 17 and in love. Later with my rock band,<br />
“Limelight,” we would play original songs with 70s-inspired, seemingly endless guitar solos and<br />
funny keyboard sounds. But we had great gigs and critics would rave about our philosophical<br />
lyrics, interesting sound effects and “Krissy’s soothing voice that made some girls stare dreamily<br />
into the void." Yes, I know. I’m only quoting the local newspaper.<br />
It was after getting my translator's degree and moving to Munich with the love of my life, who<br />
became my husband, that I discovered musical theater through a local dance school. While<br />
starting my business as a literary translator, I also started taking voice lessons with Bruno<br />
Hetzendorfer, cabaret performer and former opera singer with a poignant dark Vienna humor.<br />
Bruno not only taught me how to breathe properly and find my own unique sound; he<br />
also introduced me to tons of beautiful<br />
show tunes. Last but not least, he built<br />
my confidence by inviting me to<br />
perform in some of his shows and sing<br />
backing vocals on his album.<br />
By some mysterious coincidence I got<br />
cast in the first ever and only German<br />
professional production of “Annie,” for<br />
the ensemble and the anonymous role<br />
of the Star-To-Be who gets to step out of<br />
the crowd to sing a soaring solo –<br />
a successful debut for me, but sadly,<br />
back then musical theater wasn’t that<br />
big of a thing in Germany, and even<br />
though I lost my heart to it, I couldn’t<br />
quite pursue the path to Broadway.<br />
51
Instead, another classical voice<br />
teacher and a jazz band crossed<br />
my path. Soprano Ulrike Belician<br />
gave me a glimpse of what it<br />
means to train a voice for the<br />
opera stage. My voice actually<br />
grew big, voluminous, and<br />
operatic. Much to my teacher’s<br />
dislike, I sang in a jazz cover band<br />
called “Acidophilic” that played a<br />
variety of music called acid jazz<br />
combining elements of jazz, soul,<br />
funk and disco. Astoundingly, what<br />
seemed contradictory actually<br />
worked together nicely and made<br />
me realize that the human voice is<br />
one of the most versatile instruments that can be trained to produce many different sounds.<br />
My husband hadn’t even quite finished his PhD in Munich when he got a job offer that required<br />
us to relocate to the Rhineland. I agreed, on the condition that we would settle down in<br />
Cologne downtown as I had got to love the big city life. After relocating to Cologne and<br />
pursuing my translating career, I got cast in a musical theater revue show, “Nights On<br />
Broadway,” an ongoing professional production that kept me busy for three seasons, performing<br />
everything from “Fame” to “Phantom of the Opera” and, yay, “On My Own” from Les<br />
Misérables. Meanwhile, I continued to study voice with a renowned teacher from the Folkwang<br />
School of Performing Arts in Essen, Noel Turner, who helped me refine my sound and build a<br />
larger repertoire.<br />
I've always enjoyed singing in bands because I love watching people respond to my music and<br />
interacting with the audience. When I got the opportunity to join the “Joe Cool Band” and their<br />
disco-funk project “King James & the Royal Family,” I didn’t hesitate. Performing and touring with<br />
these guys was a great experience and worked well, even after I had my daughter Hannah and<br />
went into the mom business (writing, recording and performing kids’ pop songs with Hannah).<br />
At some point though, I got bored of singing other people’s music and decided to start my own<br />
singer/songwriter project. I wrote a set of songs, played gigs in clubs and neighborhood cafés<br />
and found a producer for my song “Babylon.” Meanwhile, I continued to further my vocal<br />
studies, taking a master class in musical theater with teachers from the Stella Academy in<br />
Hamburg, a master class in the<br />
new Estill Voice Training, a song<br />
writing class and more. During<br />
that phase, I started teaching<br />
students and found this to be a<br />
very fulfilling experience.<br />
52<br />
And then we packed our bags<br />
again and moved to San<br />
Francisco. Singing and making<br />
music have always been the<br />
things in my life that kept my<br />
boat afloat, but the move to<br />
California took my musical<br />
career to a whole new level. The<br />
San Francisco Bay Area<br />
welcomed me with a vibrant<br />
and diverse scene of music,
theater and cabaret that seemed to be waiting just for me. I got cast in musical theater shows<br />
and ended up doing a series of revue shows in San Francisco with a new company<br />
named “John Bisceglie Presents.” Getting to work with so many like-minded supertalented<br />
people made it easy to be creative and productive. I had the privilege to be a founding<br />
member of Dominic Lim’s “NovAntiqua,” a vocal ensemble based in Oakland, CA, consisting of<br />
some of the most sought-after musicians in the area. Eventually, I started to put my own shows<br />
together, in an iconic piano bar in San Francisco, Martuni’s, under the wings of drag artist and<br />
trained baritone Vanessa Bousay, who had become my dear friend and mentor.<br />
Before long, I took a liking to producing shows on a bigger scale and created “To California with<br />
Love,” a fundraiser concert for the Hemophilia Foundation of Northern California that took place<br />
in May 2016 in Lafayette, CA, including twelve performers, two pianists and a cello player, and a<br />
slideshow. I picked the music, picked the cast and<br />
crew, the music director, wrote the script, and<br />
performed in almost every number. Many of our<br />
friends came to see the show, and I got the feeling I<br />
was able to give them something lasting and<br />
memorable, the essence of the time we got to<br />
spend together.<br />
While living in California, I took lessons with a former<br />
opera singer from the East Coast, Loree Capper,<br />
who helped me keep my voice safe and sound and<br />
let it grow with all the singing. Working with her and<br />
studying her unique teaching approach made me<br />
want to pick up my teaching career.<br />
In 2017 I started a three-year diploma course in a<br />
groundbreaking new vocal technique called<br />
“Complete Vocal Technique” (CVT) in the beautiful<br />
town of Copenhagen, Denmark, that is based on<br />
science and designed for all singers, no matter the<br />
genre or style. Now that my daughter is almost on<br />
her way to college, my goal is to pick up teaching<br />
voice and establish myself as a CVT teacher/<br />
coach. Of course, I also want to continue<br />
performing – with the new projects that I started this year – an original band named “Sonic99”<br />
and an acoustic jazz/pop guitar duo). I’d love to sing in a small vocal ensemble and I want to<br />
put little cabaret shows on stage, just myself and a pianist and maybe a duet partner for a<br />
couple songs, just like I did in California.<br />
I grew up with classical music, and I’m grateful for this solid base and background. However, I<br />
never really felt at home in classical singing. To express myself vocally I needed rhythmical music;<br />
my first influences were American protest singers, such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, the 70s rock<br />
and blues bands such as Deep Purple and The Doors, who were already considered as “oldies”<br />
in the 80s, but very popular in Germany at the time. To this day, I love checking out different<br />
genres and new music, and I am a great fan of contemporary artists such as Ed Sheeran or<br />
Alicia Keys.<br />
Ironically, I had to leave the home country of classical music not only to appreciate my musical<br />
roots but also to find a bunch of talented vocalists to share them with. It was in the US that I<br />
realized that my classical upbringing and training had had more impact on my musicality than I<br />
thought. I actually started to perform not only classical super hits like “Pie Jesu” or the<br />
“Flower Duet” from Lakmé, but also Schubert and Strauss art songs, and dared include them into<br />
my cabaret programs. Today, more than ever, I am convinced that music is about story telling<br />
53
and sharing feelings, no matter the<br />
genre or style. It seems like the stint in<br />
California has made my musical career<br />
come full circle.<br />
I always thought that the joy of music is<br />
universal, and I still do, but I was<br />
surprised to see that there are definitely<br />
different ways of experiencing it in<br />
other parts of the world. I never liked<br />
the German concept of dividing music<br />
into “serious” and “entertaining,”<br />
implying that “entertaining” is somehow<br />
of lesser value. Shouldn’t music always<br />
be entertaining? Isn’t there serious work<br />
behind every show, even if it looks seemingly effortless and easy going? American musical<br />
theater is appreciated and loved for both being seriously hard and entertainingly light.<br />
I love that about it.<br />
Pieces of music I recommend/love<br />
Any song from the musical Les Misérables because it’s an epic piece of music about the<br />
eternal human struggle and universal values.<br />
“Diamonds & Rust” by Joan Baez; I’ve learned to play the beautiful guitar picking a long<br />
time ago and have loved to sing this song ever since.<br />
“Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey, one of the most<br />
inspiring songs I’ve ever heard. For me, it represents<br />
everything I love about America.<br />
“Who Wants to Live Forever” by Queen: if there’s a song<br />
that brings me to tears in a second it’s this one. And<br />
sometimes everyone needs a good cry.<br />
I used “Super Girl” by Reamonn in the soundtrack for a<br />
video about my daughter when she was little. She will<br />
always be my super girl.<br />
GETTING TO KNOW KRISSY<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself that<br />
not many people know. I dislike buttons with a<br />
passion. Any buttons. Some call it<br />
buttonphobia. It’s a thing. I googled it.<br />
If you could meet one musician, who would it<br />
be? I would love to meet James Taylor. He<br />
seems to be not only an accomplished<br />
musician but also a wonderful person. I<br />
imagine it would be amazing to sing and play<br />
music with him in his barn studio, harmonize to<br />
his beautiful songs and maybe create<br />
something new together. Other than that, I’m<br />
not that attracted by stardom; I have sung with<br />
incredibly talented people who weren’t<br />
famous, and got just as many goosebumps<br />
doing so.<br />
The most unusual place I have performed or<br />
listened to music was… a Holy Mary grotto in<br />
the middle of the forest when my godson was<br />
being christened. I sang “Summertime”<br />
accompanied by an old friend and cogodparent.<br />
It was a very special and spiritual<br />
experience for me.<br />
If we looked in your purse/wallet/pocket what<br />
three things would we find that would tell us<br />
something about you? A single dollar bill folded<br />
Origami-style into a bird reminding me of a<br />
very happy family trip to Hawaii; our wedding<br />
Bible verses on a handwritten paper note from<br />
our actual wedding day; an Apple SIM card<br />
ejector pin; a membership card for my favorite<br />
dance studio in Cologne.<br />
54
Belgium: Regular Season Tickets<br />
ANITA MEUWISSEN<br />
American <strong>Women</strong>’s Club of Antwerp, Belgium<br />
From: Belgium<br />
Lives: Antwerp, Belgium<br />
55<br />
I grew up in a small town in Flanders, Belgium. I was<br />
born to a Dutch father and a Belgian mother. We were<br />
a family of four children, two boys and two girls. I was<br />
the second oldest.<br />
I had a very close relationship with my parents and<br />
siblings. We lived in a house with a big garden and we<br />
played outside most of the time when we were home.<br />
My parents were passionate about classical music and<br />
we grew up listening to baroque music and opera.<br />
When I was eight, I started playing the piano. At<br />
sixteen I stopped and became interested in listening to<br />
classical music by the best performers and enjoyed<br />
comparing different interpretations of each piece.<br />
I left home to study in Ghent to become a translator. The years in Ghent were “student” years,<br />
and because of this, music was less present in my everyday life. I met my husband William when<br />
I was a student. After graduating, we got married and moved to Brussels. The city offered a<br />
large choice of classical music concerts and is home to the opera house De Munt/La Monnaie.<br />
We were happy to have season tickets to the opera house. Gerard Mortier was the director at<br />
that time. He went on to become a leading opera director at different opera houses in the<br />
world, such as the Salzburger Festspiele and the Paris<br />
Opéra La Bastille.<br />
Ten years later, we moved to Antwerp. Antwerp also<br />
has a lot to offer. One of our favorite places is AMUZ,<br />
a beautiful concert venue specializing in top-notch<br />
performances of early music. AMUZ is located in a<br />
beautiful baroque church in downtown Antwerp.<br />
My husband and I take at least one music class a<br />
year. Most recently, we did courses on Beethoven<br />
and Bach. Learning about music teaches you about<br />
the composers and how to better understand the<br />
music by analyzing it, listening to different<br />
performances and comparing them. It is very<br />
interesting to see how opinions vary. We also love<br />
going to live concerts. There are so many choices<br />
today, and I think it’s the best way to listen to and<br />
enjoy music.<br />
My first musical influences were my parents. They<br />
listened to classical music, mainly from the baroque
and classical periods, as well as opera almost daily. When I was sixteen, my parents took me to<br />
Bruges to a live performance of the opera Il Trovatore, written by my favorite opera composer,<br />
Verdi. It made a lasting impression on me, and since then I have adored opera. In addition, I love<br />
all classical music between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Beyond that period, most<br />
music is too “modern” for me. But my taste in music has changed over the years. When I was<br />
very young, I listened to romantic composers such as Brahms. Now I focus mainly on music<br />
dating from before the mid-nineteenth century.<br />
I have been surprised in the last twenty years how classically educated performers mix popular<br />
and classical music, resulting in performances in huge halls. It all means that there is a much<br />
bigger choice of live music compared to when I was younger.<br />
Music enriches life. It broadens perspectives and fosters the desire to discover more about the<br />
person who created the music as<br />
well as the country he or she lived<br />
in. Music is influenced by society<br />
and the time period when it is<br />
written. Music expands horizons,<br />
making you interested in so much<br />
more than music. I am a<br />
perfectionist by nature, and<br />
through music this feeling has<br />
increased; I will always seek out<br />
and listen to top performances in<br />
top venues. I hope to have<br />
inspired others to listen to classical<br />
music and to become as<br />
passionate about it as I am. It<br />
makes life so much richer. I have<br />
inspired my daughter: she has<br />
played the violin since she was<br />
four years old and she is working in<br />
a classical music concert hall in Antwerp.<br />
Pieces of music I recommend/love<br />
Violin Concerto in D Major, op. 62 (Yehudi Menuhin, violin): Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-<br />
1827). The concerto premiered in Vienna in 1806. It took Beethoven only six weeks to<br />
compose. It is a lyrical masterpiece of great creativity that clearly exceeded the genre’s<br />
boundaries. The solo part becomes more and more impressive towards the end. It is a<br />
unique piece of music.<br />
Piano Concerto no. 5 (Emperor), in E flat Major, op. 73 (Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli,<br />
piano): Ludwig van Beethoven. This is one of five piano concertos by Beethoven; all are<br />
very beautiful. They were composed between 1793 and 1809, a fairly short time in<br />
Beethoven’s compositional career. The Fifth Piano Concerto, also called Emperor, is<br />
splendidly worked out and is a very inspiring piece. Beethoven created a new relationship<br />
between the piano and the orchestra. In Beethoven’s piano concertos, the soloist plays a<br />
far more important role than in, for example, Mozart piano concertos.<br />
Double Concerto for Violin in E Major BWV 1042-1043 (David and Igor Oistrakh, violin):<br />
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Bach shows us heaven.<br />
Impromptus D 899 and D 935 (Krystian Zimerman, piano) Franz Schubert (1797-1828). In my<br />
opinion, these pieces are among the most brilliant and moving ever composed for a piano.<br />
Orfeo: Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). Monteverdi was an Italian composer; his opera<br />
Orfeo is considered to be the first opera ever composed. The Italian Renaissance was<br />
coming to an end when Monteverdi composed Orfeo. It is a work of great intensity and<br />
drama and is one of my favorite operas.<br />
56
GETTING TO KNOW ANITA<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself<br />
that not many people know. I have the idea to<br />
help out as a volunteer in an orphanage for<br />
children in Africa or maybe to work on the<br />
Mercy Ships one day.<br />
If you could meet one musician, who would it<br />
be? I would like to meet Arturo<br />
Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-1995).<br />
He is my all time favorite pianist.<br />
Unfortunately, I never heard him in<br />
a live performance. He was an<br />
Italian pianist and he was very<br />
refined in his playing. I would like<br />
him to play “Ballade no 1, op. 23”<br />
as well as “Andante Spianato” and<br />
“Grande Polonaise Brilliante op.<br />
22,” all composed by Frédéric<br />
Chopin (1810-1849).<br />
where I have listened to music was at the<br />
Arena di Verona in Italy. The venue is magical,<br />
especially in the evening. We went to see Aïda<br />
by Verdi. It was a high level performance,<br />
including a huge stage with live horses, but<br />
unfortunately, the acoustics were subpar and<br />
the music was lost.<br />
The most unusual place I have<br />
performed or listened to music<br />
was… The most unusual place<br />
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57
France: Vocal Jazz Parisian Style<br />
58<br />
I grew up in Boston, with a French mother and an<br />
American father. My earliest memory is of drifting off to<br />
sleep listening to my mother play Chopin and Schubert<br />
on the piano. There was always music in our house. I<br />
played the cello and my brother and sister also studied<br />
music. My mother listened exclusively to classical music,<br />
and my father listened to jazz. When I discovered Joni<br />
Mitchell, I listened to her music obsessively, while my<br />
brother listened to rock.<br />
In my later teen years and when I moved to NY for<br />
college, I focused more on dance than on music. After<br />
college, I worked as a dancer and runway model for<br />
many years, during which music was mostly something to<br />
listen or dance to.<br />
Then in 1980, I moved to Paris for 6 months to model and stayed paying for 12 years of storage in<br />
NYC, before finally going through my boxes of college essays and shampoo, and shipping what I<br />
really wanted to keep to France.<br />
As my sons were growing up and I was trying to decide what I would do with the rest of my life, a<br />
friend brought me to a vocal jazz workshop. I was instantly hooked, and after a few years of<br />
evening classes, decided to seriously pursue music. I auditioned for professional music schools,<br />
where most of the students were not much older than my children (and when I ran into them<br />
outside the classroom, usually assumed I was a teacher), and studied vocal jazz, jazz harmony,<br />
arrangement and composition.<br />
I had already started my first<br />
band and was performing in<br />
jazz bars, but during that time I<br />
wrote my first songs and<br />
realized that songwriting wasn’t<br />
rocket science and was<br />
something I could actually do.<br />
It was a means of expression<br />
that felt incredibly organic,<br />
immediate and intimate to me.<br />
Performing my own songs<br />
changed the way I sing in a<br />
very profound way and I am<br />
always thrilled when people tell<br />
me my songs move them or<br />
make them think.<br />
KAY BOURGINE<br />
Association of American <strong>Women</strong> in Europe,<br />
Paris<br />
From: Boston, MA<br />
Lives: Paris, France
My current band is guitar, cello and voice, very intimate and acoustic and it feels incredibly<br />
right for my music. I’m in the planning phase of a CD of my own songs. I now play regularly in<br />
some of the best jazz clubs in Paris and hope to start touring in other countries.<br />
I also teach voice and performance skills and lead frequent classes and workshops in Circle<br />
Songs (collective vocal improvisation). I’ve been fortunate to study with Bobby McFerrin,<br />
Rhiannon and many other<br />
incredible vocal improvisers. I<br />
work with professional singers,<br />
amateurs and people who have<br />
been told they can’t sing. I work<br />
with adults, children, teens,<br />
young people in college or<br />
masters programs, older people<br />
and business groups. It’s a<br />
powerful way to explore selfexpression,<br />
to gain confidence,<br />
to find one’s voice, to learn how<br />
one positions oneself in a group,<br />
to learn to take the lead yet be<br />
ready to drop it and follow<br />
someone else’s lead at any time,<br />
to learn deep listening skills, to<br />
feel seen and heard.<br />
My first musical influences were Chopin, Schubert, Leonard Bernstein - West Side Story, The<br />
Gershwins - Porgy and Bess, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers musicals, and Joni Mitchell and<br />
James Taylor. Then as I got older, I became fascinated by Soul Train and started listening to funk<br />
and soul. As a songwriter, Joni is certainly my biggest influence, along with other singersongwriters<br />
(James Taylor, Ricki Lee Jones, Suzanne Vega) and Celtic music. I still love all of the<br />
music cited above, and Joni is my go-to music when I’m sad, but I’ve been discovering country<br />
music recently and have found a few singers I really admire. I like to listen to jazz and Arvo Pärt,<br />
Gorecki, Samuel Barber and Philip Glass, and go to many concerts.<br />
Music is a universal language, spanning borders, creating connection and community<br />
throughout the world, without the barrier of spoken language. I find there’s also a spiritual<br />
aspect to songwriting and to collective improvisation, which nourishes me and brings joy and<br />
meaning to my life every day. Through my music I have discovered that I know how to create a<br />
safe space for people and I get deep satisfaction from creating that space and watching<br />
people blossom. I’m proud to say that today I work with amazing musicians and play in good<br />
jazz clubs.<br />
Pieces of music I recommend/love<br />
Joni Mitchell’s album Blue - because it has been my go-to music when I’m sad and/or<br />
pensive ever since I was 12 years old and still moves me deeply.<br />
West Side Story - which has been a part of my life as far back as I can remember and I<br />
absolutely love it.<br />
Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” and “Serenade for<br />
String Orchestra,” because they’re so beautiful. I’ve listened<br />
to them hundreds of times and will hundreds more.<br />
“Alina” by Arvo Pärt because it makes me dream.<br />
The songs “Sexual Healing” by Marvin Gaye, “Brick House”<br />
by The Commodores and “Renaissance” by Al di Meola,<br />
Jean Luc Ponty and Stanley Clarke, because they make<br />
me want to dance.<br />
59
GETTING TO KNOW KAY<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself<br />
that not many people know. I worked for years<br />
as a backup dancer behind pop stars on<br />
French TV shows at the same time as I was<br />
walking the runways for top designers in<br />
haute couture. It was quite contrast. And<br />
I got my start in modeling on roller skates!<br />
myself. I would love to be able to do that on<br />
the guitar.<br />
If you could meet one musician, who<br />
would it be? I would love to meet Joni<br />
Mitchell again. I spent an evening sitting<br />
next to her once when I was 22, but I<br />
was too young and self-conscious to<br />
dare say much to her. I would love to<br />
have another chance.<br />
What are some of the things you would<br />
love to get better at and things you<br />
would like to stop doing? I’d like to learn<br />
to play the guitar. I compose on the<br />
piano, but can’t accompany<br />
"You are born an<br />
artist,<br />
or you are not.<br />
And you stay an<br />
artist, dear,<br />
even if your voice<br />
is less of a<br />
fireworks.<br />
The artist is always<br />
there."<br />
– MARIA CALLAS<br />
60
If I were a musical instrument I would be...<br />
..a grand<br />
piano. I<br />
understand<br />
the<br />
instrument<br />
better than<br />
other instruments because I have<br />
played it myself. The timbre of a<br />
grand piano is bright and big. It is<br />
a fascinating instrument because<br />
you can play different notes at<br />
the same time. Many of the great<br />
composers were excellent<br />
pianists.<br />
ANITA MEUWISSEN<br />
..a cello. It’s still my favorite<br />
instrument….the one that moves me the<br />
most deeply, the one I chose to study<br />
when I was 8 and it’s said to be the<br />
instrument closest to the human voice. I<br />
love the sound it makes!<br />
KAY BOURGINE<br />
..a singer because I feel like I AM a<br />
musical instrument myself as my<br />
whole body is involved in making<br />
sound.<br />
KRISSY DORN<br />
...a bass. On a<br />
cartoon in Milt<br />
Hinton's room it says,<br />
“You can tell he<br />
loves his bass<br />
because of the way<br />
he hugs it.”<br />
MARIANNE GAUER<br />
..my husband’s cello from now and<br />
then. I would put all my love to him in<br />
creating the most beautiful sound on<br />
his instrument to make him happy.<br />
MIEKE STOEL<br />
..the french horn. It has the same lovely middle<br />
range as the viola but it is an orchestral solo<br />
instrument that embodies nobility and purity in<br />
warm tones that carry over any instrument. It<br />
has a beautiful design, very round, and is the<br />
bridge between the woodwinds and the brass<br />
in the orchestra. Chamber music is written for it<br />
in combination with both woodwind<br />
ensembles and brass ensembles. You can<br />
have your cake and eat it, too. The horn is<br />
never buried in the orchestral sound but soars<br />
above it filling<br />
the air with<br />
hope and<br />
beauty.<br />
CAROL HABICH-<br />
TRAUT<br />
..the piano because it is the closet to the<br />
voice and I would be able to interpret so<br />
many<br />
melodies and<br />
play so many<br />
songs. Then<br />
the lyrics “I am<br />
music and I<br />
write the<br />
songs” would<br />
really be true.<br />
GWEN PERRY<br />
61
Germany: Life As A Viola Player<br />
I grew up in Hauppauge on Long Island, NY. My<br />
mom started taking piano lessons and I decided at<br />
two years old to climb onto the piano and try to<br />
play. I guess mom thought I had talent as I started<br />
lessons at three years old.<br />
In the second grade at elementary school, everyone<br />
got a hearing test and those with decent ears were<br />
offered instruments in the beginning of 3rd grade. I<br />
did score second highest in the school but as I was sick on selection day, there were only violins<br />
left to choose, so I started on violin. We had group lessons in school and played in orchestra but<br />
my mom also got me private lessons. I didn’t practice much as I was interested in everything and<br />
loved school, just couldn’t decide where to concentrate my energy.<br />
For a few years I attended the junior championship program at the Post Washington Tennis<br />
Academy and considered pursuing that professionally. Not wanting to leave high school early, I<br />
decided against it and suddenly music really hit me as important and I started practicing hard. I<br />
applied to the Manhattan School of Music pre-college program, graduated from high school<br />
and immediately went to my first summer music program at Bowdoin College.<br />
After Bowdoin, I moved to NYC and got a live-in job with an elderly lady that I cooked and<br />
shopped for and a part-time job at the gift shop at Lincoln Center. I also studied violin privately<br />
with Lewis Kaplan from Juilliard, whom I had studied with at Bowdoin, and practiced a lot. I<br />
noticed that practicing violin a lot was giving me a headache and the shakes but I persevered<br />
until I went back to Bowdoin and discovered the viola and started studying with Paul Doktor,<br />
which being in a lower register and having the bridge further away from my ears, did not cause<br />
me problems.<br />
In September I had an<br />
audition for Juilliard and was<br />
accepted. I moved into the<br />
Beacon Hotel near Juilliard<br />
with a fellow student and as I<br />
got no funds from my<br />
parents, got a job at Macy’s<br />
working 22.5 hours a week<br />
(weekends and evenings) to<br />
make ends meet. Having<br />
hardly any money for food, I<br />
got very skinny and sick but<br />
then found a patron through<br />
Juilliard, got a free place to<br />
CAROL HABICH-TRAUT<br />
American International <strong>Women</strong>’s Club of<br />
Düsseldorf, Germany<br />
From: New York, NY<br />
Lives: Solingen, Germany<br />
62
live in the Dakota in exchange for errands<br />
and shopping for a Professor of Radiology<br />
and author of textbooks. Dr. Squire was a<br />
fabulous woman ahead of her time and I<br />
am still grateful for her generosity. I worked<br />
hard, got more scholarships, and graduated<br />
with bachelor’s and master’s degrees.<br />
Summers I spent in Aspen, Los Angeles<br />
Philharmonic Institute, Yale at Norfolk and<br />
Tanglewood. I was invited to do a Juilliard<br />
Chamber Orchestra tour of South America<br />
and Juilliard Orchestra Tour of Europe.<br />
After finishing Juilliard, I was interested in<br />
returning to Europe, so I was invited to play<br />
with the Heidelberger Chamber Orchestra,<br />
a touring orchestra and so I alternated<br />
between NYC work and HCO. While I was in<br />
Europe, I played for any auditions that<br />
coincided with my being there, and ended<br />
up as assistant Principal of Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen. One year later I was Solo-<br />
Viola of Remscheider Symphoniker, now Bergische Symphoniker.<br />
Music is my life. I’ve been a member of different chamber music ensembles and this brings me<br />
the most joy but I like the security of a steady paying job. I’ve decided to step down as Solo-<br />
Viola (1st chair) to assistant solo (2nd chair). I’m still involved in playing chamber music,<br />
sometimes do charity concerts with Robin Goldsby and have played in various constellations for<br />
the elderly or sick. I’m always interested in new directions. I’ll try anything musically once. I still<br />
love my job after so many years and certain pieces still make me cry or give me goosebumps<br />
even after so many performances! I often feel healed by music, sometimes just by playing, other<br />
times by the feedback (verbal and nonverbal) from the audience. When I listen to music, I feel<br />
carried away to another dimension, floating in a calm but exciting paradise. In the best<br />
performances, I get “in the flow” and am very in the moment but also hearing and aware of a<br />
split second ahead of me to prepare to express the next moment. It is an awesome feeling and<br />
all consuming.<br />
63
I had several early musical<br />
influences: the recordings of<br />
Jascha Heifetz, Leonard Rose,<br />
my teacher Paul Doktor,<br />
beautiful players all. Also<br />
Leonard Bernstein, Felix<br />
Galamir, Juilliard and Tokyo<br />
String Quartets, all with whom I<br />
had the pleasure of working<br />
with are still inspiring. Today<br />
there are many more.<br />
Pieces of music I recommend/<br />
love<br />
Brahms 4th symphony<br />
because I played it with<br />
Lenny Bernstein and it<br />
was an unforgettable<br />
experience.<br />
Bartok Viola Concerto<br />
because I feel very connected to it. Mozart Marriage of Figaro opera, just an amazing<br />
piece, one beautiful melody after another and played<br />
with awesome singers in Spoleto.<br />
Beethoven String Quartet Opus 131, a marathon<br />
masterpiece that I played as a member of the<br />
Newberry String Quartet at Juilliard, such really<br />
wonderful memories.<br />
La Traviata because it always makes me cry.<br />
it<br />
GETTING TO KNOW CAROL<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself<br />
that not many people know. Wynton Marsalis<br />
was in some of my classes and orchestra at<br />
Juilliard, I think he is one of the most brilliant<br />
people I’ve ever known but he is also a really<br />
nice guy.<br />
If you could meet one musician, who would it<br />
be? J.S. Bach, play his<br />
music with him and just<br />
listen to him play!<br />
The most unusual place I<br />
have performed or<br />
listened to music was…<br />
Performing Carmina<br />
Burana for the Royal<br />
family of UAE for their 30th<br />
anniversary in Abu Dhabi.<br />
Performing in my<br />
orchestra for Queen<br />
Elizabeth and Prince Philip<br />
and having the Queen<br />
standing next to me to<br />
deliver her speech!<br />
64
Luxembourg: Bringing Joy Through Singing<br />
I grew up in Atlanta, GA, one of 8 children, so growing up<br />
was very interesting. It was impossible to have time to<br />
myself, so I learned very early to be an extrovert. Going to<br />
church was a big part of my life. It took me a while before I<br />
started to sing, but by the age of 10, I was singing in a<br />
young gospel choir.<br />
After finishing high school, I took the route of most abiding<br />
children and went to college to study computer science.<br />
After almost two years of studying, I knew I had to follow my<br />
heart, so I moved to New York City to study acting, singing<br />
and dance.<br />
After meeting my husband, he got an offer to come to Luxembourg for work. It was a very<br />
difficult decision for me, as my career was starting to show some promise. After a lot of thought, I<br />
followed love. However, not long after moving to Luxembourg I found the entertainment scene<br />
and things took off from there. Becoming a mom changed my focus and passion for a while;<br />
however, now that my children are growing up, I can start to feel the itch to try again.<br />
I have always been a huge fan of gospel and soul singers so my first musical influences were<br />
people like Diana Ross, Whitney Houston, Bette Midler, Oleta Adams etc. The influences haven’t<br />
really changed over time; however, they have developed quite a bit. Over time, you learn to<br />
find your own voice and sound but my influences are still rooted in gospel and soul.<br />
I have learned over time that I<br />
should trust my voice and that<br />
it’s truly an instrument that needs<br />
to be taken care of and tuned.<br />
When you sing sometimes you<br />
get this out of body experience.<br />
You know you’re there, but you<br />
feel like you’re floating. It’s such<br />
a calming and warm feeling. I’m<br />
proud of the joy that I bring to<br />
people when I sing. When<br />
someone tells me that they had<br />
goosebumps after hearing me<br />
sing, it’s an incredibly humble<br />
feeling. In the music business<br />
today you don’t need to be a<br />
good or great singer; auto-tune<br />
is a miracle worker!<br />
ARNITA SWANSON-HALLERSTROM<br />
American <strong>Women</strong>’s Club of Luxembourg,<br />
Luxembourg<br />
From: Atlanta, GA<br />
Lives: Luxembourg<br />
65
Pieces of music I recommend/love<br />
Whitney Houston’s first CD.<br />
Teddy Pendergrass’s music.<br />
Kirk Franklin & family’s music.<br />
Adele’s music.<br />
Yolanda Adams’s music.<br />
GETTING TO KNOW ARNITA<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself<br />
that not many people know.<br />
I am a Luxembourg citizen.<br />
If you could perform with one musician, who<br />
would it be and what music would you like to<br />
play? I would have loved to perform with<br />
Whitney Houston. The song that I would have<br />
wanted to perform with her would have been<br />
“I Have Nothing.”<br />
The most unusual place I have performed or<br />
listened to music was… in Dubai. They built a<br />
stage that was in between their two towers<br />
and it was a bit scary in the beginning, but<br />
after a while, it was so fun.<br />
What are some of the things you would love to<br />
get better at and things you would like to stop<br />
doing? I would love to get better at my tennis<br />
game and I need to stop trying to help<br />
everyone (shhh, I do love being helpful<br />
though).<br />
66
Switzerland: In The Opera Chorus<br />
ELEANOR PAUNOVIC<br />
American <strong>Women</strong>’s Club of Zurich, Switzerland<br />
From: Fort Covington, NY<br />
Lives: Zurich, Switzerland<br />
I grew up in Fort Covington, NY, which is on the<br />
Canadian border with Quebec. Montreal was the<br />
closest cultural center. I had a normal childhood filled<br />
with cold-weather sports and lots of music, as my<br />
mother taught piano. I played and sang from an early<br />
age, realizing that I had a mature voice when I was<br />
quite young. I had natural vibrato at around age 7. I<br />
also played trumpet. I belonged to various all-state<br />
choruses and bands, winning competitions and even<br />
going on a European Tour when I was 16, playing<br />
trumpet in the United States Collegiate Wind Band.<br />
I went to SUNY Oswego, majoring in Voice. I explored<br />
other types of music there, performing in musicals and<br />
jazz groups. I then went on to the New England<br />
Conservatory in Boston, where I received a master's degree in Voice. There I discovered my love<br />
for early (Baroque/Renaissance) music. I lived and worked in Boston for quite a few years<br />
afterward, honing my performance skills. I sang in the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston<br />
Baroque, and many other groups, both in the ensembles and as soloist. I eventually made my<br />
way to Zurich after a friend told me that there was a spot in the opera chorus. I still sing there, it is<br />
how I make my living, and when I'm not there, I have an active and busy solo career. I recently<br />
performed my "Best of Broadway," which is a two-woman show (my accompanist is another<br />
American who is also a lover of musicals), and sang as soloist in Vivaldi's Gloria with a wonderful<br />
Baroque orchestra.<br />
My plan is to stay here in Zurich until I retire - I have two teenagers who are in the Swiss school<br />
system. After that, when we move back to the States, I hope to get a college position and teach<br />
voice privately.<br />
My mom was my first, and biggest,<br />
musical influence. Later on, my<br />
individual voice teachers were my<br />
mentors, and some conductors<br />
(Christopher Hogwood comes to<br />
mind) were influential in terms of<br />
style. I have found that the great<br />
conductors, directors and other<br />
singers are all nice and helpful. The<br />
higher up their level, the more<br />
pleasant and helpful I find they are.<br />
67
For me good music is good music,<br />
regardless of the genre. When you<br />
perform from your heart, it doesn't matter<br />
if it's classical, musical, country or rock - as<br />
long as it's authentic. I have learned how<br />
to rise to any musical challenge that a<br />
director throws my way - singing in crazy<br />
costumes doing improbable things is part<br />
of the job description.<br />
Yesterday I went to see the West End<br />
show Let it Be and I cried quite a bit<br />
because music, when it is performed<br />
well, is evocative and takes us<br />
somewhere. This particular musical takes<br />
the audience back to the 60s and 70s. For<br />
most audience members, these years<br />
were our formative years, and we could<br />
laugh and cry at the various old<br />
commercials, etc. that were projected on<br />
the screens. But we also cried<br />
remembering John Lennon and George<br />
Harrison. When I listen to music, my heart<br />
is usually deeply touched that someone<br />
got up there in the first place (it's hard to do that!), and that someone is trying to communicate<br />
deep emotions with the audience. When I am performing, it's sort of the opposite, but onceremoved,<br />
as the performer needs to keep his or her "cool". As my voice teacher once said "it's<br />
not your job to cry. It's your job to make the audience cry.”<br />
As an expat, I have become very patriotic! So doing my solo concerts of American music is<br />
something I enjoy doing - I raised over 2,300 CHF at the last one, which I donated to my Club/<br />
Church charities.<br />
Pieces of music I recommend/<br />
love<br />
My recommended music would<br />
probably change daily, but today<br />
it would be:<br />
Mozart's C Minor Mass.<br />
Sondheim's Company.<br />
Eric Whitacre's “Sleep.”<br />
Purcell's “Hear my Cry Oh<br />
Lord.”<br />
Cold Swindell's “Break up in<br />
the End” - I am a huge<br />
Country fan!<br />
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GETTING TO KNOW ELEANOR<br />
Tell us something interesting about yourself<br />
that not many people know. I am an avid and<br />
competitive bridge player, and I read the<br />
tarot cards.<br />
If you could perform with one musician, who<br />
would it be and what music would you like to<br />
play? Mozart, obviously. I would love to sing<br />
arias from The Marriage of Figaro, Cosi fan<br />
Tutti, and Idomeneo with him accompanying.<br />
The most unusual place I have performed or<br />
listened to music was… I guess I have<br />
performed in only conventional concert halls,<br />
but one of the most interesting was the Santa<br />
Fe Opera, which is an open-air theatre in the<br />
desert of New Mexico, and the sunset is visible<br />
through the back of the theatre. Another<br />
would be Theatre an der Wien, in Vienna,<br />
where Mozart conducted.<br />
What are some of the things you would love to<br />
get better at and things you would like to stop<br />
doing? I would like to get better at keeping<br />
my house clean! I would like to stop obsessing<br />
over my schedule.<br />
“If you copy, it means<br />
that you work without any<br />
real feeling. No two<br />
people are alike, and it’s<br />
got to be that way with<br />
music, or it isn’t music.”<br />
– BILLIE HOLIDAY<br />
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<strong>Inspiring</strong> You<br />
Founded in 1931, FAWCO is a global women’s NGO (Non-Governmental Organization), an<br />
international network of independent volunteer clubs and associations comprising 62<br />
member clubs in 31 countries worldwide, with a total membership of around 10,000. FAWCO<br />
serves as a resource and a voice for its members; seeks to improve the lives of women and<br />
girls worldwide, especially in the areas of human rights, health, education and the<br />
environment; advocates for the rights of US citizens overseas; and contributes to the global<br />
community through its Global Issues Teams and The FAWCO Foundation, which provides<br />
development grants and education awards. Since 1997, FAWCO has held special<br />
consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council.<br />
OUR MISSION STATEMENT<br />
FAWCO is an international federation of independent organizations whose mission is<br />
• to build strong support networks for its American and international membership;<br />
• to improve the lives of women and girls worldwide;<br />
• to advocate for the rights of US citizens overseas; and<br />
• to mobilize the skills of its membership in support of global initiatives for education, the<br />
environment, health and human rights.<br />
MAGAZINE FEEDBACK<br />
We want this magazine to be interesting for all FAWCO members. In an<br />
effort to provide articles of interest to all of our readers, we have created<br />
an online feedback questionnaire. It should only take a few minutes of your<br />
time to complete and will be a great help to us!<br />
Please click on the link or paste it into your browser<br />
to complete the survey.<br />
https://s.surveyplanet.com/CEvBvdX_Ft<br />
Thanks very much indeed!<br />
ADVERTISING DISCLAIMER<br />
FAWCO receives financial remuneration for page space from advertisers. Views expressed or<br />
benefits described in any display advertisement, advertorial or in any webpage visited online<br />
directly from these adverts, are not endorsed by FAWCO.<br />
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More About This Issue<br />
For more information about this magazine, please contact <strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong> Editor in<br />
Chief Liz MacNiven at inspiringwomen.editor@fawco.org<br />
For more information on how to advertise in this magazine, please contact FAWCO<br />
Advertising and Sponsorship Manager Elsie Bose at advertising@fawco.org<br />
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:<br />
Thanks to Anita, Arnita, Beverly, Carol, Christine, Eleanor, Gwen, Katie, Kay, Krissy,<br />
Margaret, Marianne, Mieke, Paulette, Rick, both Robins and the ladies of AWC<br />
Gothenburg for taking the time to participate in this edition and for the use of their<br />
photos and those of their friends and family. Thanks to Jane for her letter.<br />
Special thanks to the proofreading team of Karen Boeker (AWC Denmark), Sallie<br />
Chaballier (AAWE Paris), Laurie Brooks (AWC Amsterdam/AWC The Hague), Janet<br />
Davis (AIWC Cologne), Mary Dobrian (AIWC Cologne), Cynthia Lehman (AIWC<br />
Cologne), Carol-Lyn McKelvey (AIWC Cologne/FAUSA) Mary Stewart Burgher (AWC<br />
Denmark) and Jenny Taylor (AIWC Cologne and Düsseldorf).<br />
The <strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong> Team at the FAWCO <strong>2018</strong> IM in The Hague<br />
Copyright <strong>2018</strong> FAWCO<br />
<strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong>© Magazine is owned and published electronically by FAWCO.<br />
All rights reserved. All bylined articles are copyright of their respective authors as indicated herein and<br />
are reproduced with their permission. The magazine or portions of it may not be reproduced in any form,<br />
stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means-electronic, mechanical,<br />
photocopy or otherwise without written consent of the publisher.<br />
71
Coming Next Spring!<br />
<strong>Women</strong> who Persist, Part 2<br />
"There is no limit to what we, as women,<br />
can accomplish."<br />
– Michelle Obama<br />
Our spring issue will present the profiles of a second set of women from our clubs who are<br />
walking the walk. Through their insistence and their persistence, they have set out to right<br />
a wrong, elevate justice and make the case for a better human condition. <strong>Women</strong>’s<br />
rights, children’s rights, poverty, hunger, health or the environment - there are challenges<br />
everywhere we look. The difference is that these women did not look away.<br />
We already have the candidates for this issue but we do need a fabulous cover photo.<br />
The process is simple...we need :<br />
Cover Page Image: This is a call to all our members who persist and make a change in<br />
this world. Perhaps you are involved in a community, at home or far away from home?<br />
Because you are so engaged in what you are convinced to be right and important, you<br />
must have taken pictures of the places or the people you are involved with. Please send<br />
me any picture you think could send a strong message to your fellow FAWCO members.<br />
Thank you!<br />
Photos need to be sent by March 28, 2019: Please send to Marie-Bénédicte Luxem,<br />
inspiringwomen.cover@fawco.org. They must be PORTRAIT orientation (landscape photos<br />
cannot be accepted), digital and color, 150-300 dpi quality and 5-10 MB max. and taken<br />
by a FAWCO member with details of where and when the photo was taken. (N.B.<br />
Accreditation will be given for photos used but no payment is possible.)<br />
REMEMBER ALSO: We offer great rates for FAWCO club members wishing to advertise in<br />
the magazine. Contact Elsie Bose: advertising@fawco.org<br />
Thanks to the Official Premier Sponsor of<br />
<strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong>:<br />
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