“About 20 of us from the Utah Symphony recently spent a week in Cap-Haitien, in the north of Haiti,” writes Thierry Fischer, music director of the Utah Symphony, in USA Today on April 30. “We were there for the National Orchestra Institute, a partnership with Building Leaders Using Music Education. For the second year in a row, BLUME had brought together about 100 Haitian musicians for a week of intensive training…. I first learned about the institute last year when John Eckstein, one of our cellists, told me in an email that ‘we just want you to know that 17 of us are going to Haiti on our week off to teach music.’ The musicians were volunteers raising their own funds for the trip from private donors.… It’s one thing to make yourself feel collaborative by making a donation, but it’s a completely different thing to … take the initiative and be prepared to be confronted by a different world and to give of yourself…. I am so proud of the musicians of the Utah Symphony for bringing us there in the first place. We are an orchestra … committed to both our work in America and in developing countries like Haiti, and to the notion of sharing what sounds can bring. We hope to inspire our leaders through our actions.”
Posted May 9, 2018
