Beijing, Baby: Toddler Travels With Community Chorus
By Kati Schardl
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
When the Tallahassee Community Chorus journeyed to Beijing in July to perform at the International Choral Festival, it was a family affair for featured soloist Marcia Porter - in more ways than one.
“I think of the people in the chorus as my singing family,” said Porter, an FSU voice professor. “But if you’re going to be gone for that length of time (nearly two weeks), you also want to have your biological family with you.”
Especially if one of those family members is a bright-eyed, good-natured 18-month-old toddler.
Porter brought her son, Joshua, on the China trip, along with husband Torrio Osborne and mother Edwina Porter.
Porter’s coterie of relations was one of a dozen family units that made the trip. Among the 113-person contingent from Tallahassee, several chorus members brought siblings, cousins and aunts. Sons and daughters asked moms and dads to come along, and wives wanted husbands by their side.
Chorus director André Thomas, a seasoned world traveler, brought wife Portia and son Jordan, 25, on the trip. It was the first time Thomas’ wife and son, an architectural engineer in Wichita, Kan., had traveled to Asia, and the first time Thomas himself had visited mainland China (he had previously spent a month in Taiwan conducting choral groups).
“It was great having (Jordan) around to explain the new type of buildings (the group saw being built in China) and their construction,” Thomas said in an e-mail from Cleveland, where he was helping his daughter move into a new apartment.
“It is not often that my family can accompany me when I am conducting, and it was a delight!
“This was a wonderful trip!”
