New York Teacher - May 6, 2008
— Sylvia Saunders

In the midst of a Long Island district that struggles with poverty and a poor graduation rate, the Concert Choir at Central Islip High gives voice to the transformational power of music.

The gifted young men and women wowed NYSUT’s annual convention last month, singing everything from the uplifting harmony of the “Lord of the Dance” to the soulful spiritual “Ezekiel Saw De Wheel.” Many in the audience were moved to tears. Delegates spontaneously passed the hat and raised more than $6,500 toward the group’s summer trip to perform in Italy, including the Vatican.

But perhaps the biggest applause came after NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi, who spent 34 years as a teacher in Central Islip, added that last year every one of the choir’s graduating seniors went on to college. This year’s seniors expect to repeat that amazing feat.

“Now that’s music to all our ears,” Iannuzzi said, to a standing ovation from the crowd. The graduation rate at Central Islip is less than 62 percent.

Students in the 70-member ensemble attributed their success to music teacher John Anthony, an energetic leader who cares, pushes them and demands that they do their school work and keep out of trouble if they want to stay in choir. Choir members thrive on long hours and strict structure, complete with military turns as they entered and exited the concert hall.

High expectations pay off: the group was the only Long Island high school choir selected to perform at Disney Honors in 2005 and 2007. In 2006, they represented New York at a music festival commemorating the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth in Austria. While in Europe, the group also performed in Prague and Vienna.

This summer, the group will travel to Italy to take part in the American Celebration of Music, with performances in Venice, Milan, Rome and the Vatican. Outside the high school, a replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa marks their progress through the year in raising some $180,000 for this once-in-a-lifetime trip.

“You know what people say about this town,” Anthony said. “You’ve got to prove them wrong.”

Returning to school

By Rick Steves
Tribune Media Services

(Tribune Media Services) — Siena seems to be every Italy connoisseur’s pet town. More than a sum of places to see, Siena itself is the sight. Grab a gelato, join in the evening stroll, and end up at the town’s glorious red brick main square, Il Campo. Lean up against a pillar as the setting sun plays games with the colors of the stone and the sky. At twilight, first-time poets savor that magic moment when the sky turns into a rich blue dome as bright as the medieval tower that holds it high.

Seven hundred years ago, Siena was a major military power in a class with Florence, Venice and Genoa. With a population of 60,000, it was even bigger than Paris.

To say that Siena and Florence have always been competitive is an understatement. In medieval times, a statue of Venus stood on Il Campo. After the plague hit Siena in the 14th century, the monks blamed the pagan statue. The people cut it to pieces and buried it along the walls of Florence. The dirty trick didn’t work and the plague was disastrous for the town. Siena’s loss became our sightseeing gain, as its political and economic irrelevance pickled it Gothic.

Today, Siena’s thriving historic center, with traffic-free, red brick lanes cascading every which way, offers Italy’s best Gothic city experience. Most people visit Siena, just 30 miles south of Florence, as a day trip, but it’s best experienced after dark. While Florence has the blockbuster museums, Siena has an easy-to-enjoy soul: courtyards sport flower-decked wells and alleys dead-end at red-tiled rooftop views.

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Travelers to Europe face ‘triple whammy’ as U.S. carriers raise surcharges

CHICAGO - American Airlines and Northwest Airlines have raised their fuel surcharges for flights to Europe by an additional $20 per round-trip, an air fare expert says.

The surcharges take effect Wednesday.

The total fuel surcharge on U.S. flights to London on those carriers now totals $242, says Tom Parsons, who operates the travel Web site Bestfares.com. That is on top of fares that are surging as U.S. airlines try to recoup some of the extra expense of soaring fuel prices.

Parsons says Americans traveling to Europe this summer will face a triple whammy of higher fuel surcharges, higher air fares and the high cost of the euro.

He says total costs of U.S.-to-Europe flights this summer will be two to three times what they are now.

Our MCI Tour Manager was a very important part of our tour to southern Germany. He was thoughtful, patient, always clear, always responsive to the many, many questions, requests for conversations. We always felt we were hearing from a real person, not a fabricated tour guide.

All of our concerts were important to our trip. Few of us had seen such places, much less sung in them. We knew we were in a special experience when the first reverberation from our singing struck us in the midst of our first performance. Students used singing at Dachau Concentration Camp as a religious observance, a very appropriate observance for a difficult and tearful experience. The choir master at St. Michael (name escapes me) was most welcoming and helpful integrating us into the service and providing Eucharist for the 5 Roman Catholic students who requested it.

Our relationship with the staff at Music Celebrations was “first rate” – I was especially impressed with Mr. Wiscombe’s trip to Brandeis to help us with recruitment.

The highlight for the students was singing two brief pieces (Senfl and Isaac) in the Mozart Saal in the Mirabell Palace (Salzburg) - an ecstatic experience. The swirl of sound they created in the relatively small space seemed to lift their spirits and energize their bodies.

We were thoroughly pleased with our tour experience and would happy to serve as a reference.

James Olesen
Choir Director
Brandeis University

FAIRHOPE, Alabama (AP) — Sculptor Stephen Spears is turning history into bronze with the first monument to the Navy’s D-Day heroes at Normandy and a statue of a World War I doughboy at the site of a landmark American victory in Cantigny, France.

His three bronze figures of a Navy captain and two sailors will be installed on a bluff overlooking Utah Beach to remember the naval service’s role in World War II’s pivotal amphibious invasion, adding a new visual element to the landscape at the historic site.

“All the monuments at Normandy are stone pillars, obelisks or plaques,” said retired Navy Capt. Greg Streeter of Jacksonville, Florida, chairman of the Navy D-Day Monument Project. “What we like most about our monument is that it is composed of representations of human figures that represent the officers and enlisted men that participated in the naval aspects of the Normandy invasion.”

Mike Conley, a spokesman for the American Battle Monuments Commission, which approved the Navy monument, said there are three human sculptures in the Normandy cemetery, but Spears’ work will be the first with human figures on Utah Beach.

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BERLIN, Germany (AP) — A modern reconstruction of Johann Sebastian Bach’s head — using computer modeling techniques — shows the composer as a strong-jawed man with a slight underbite, his large head topped with short, silver hair.

Rather than use Bach’s actual bones, which are buried at the St. John’s Church in Leipzig, Germany, Wilkinson worked from a copper replica of Bach’s skull made for a previous reconstruction in 1894 by physician Wilhelm His and sculptor Carl Ludwig Seffner.

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FEE FOR THE FORUM
Starting March 5th, 2008, a visit of the Roman Forum will require an entrance fee payment of Euro 12.10 per person.

UFFIZI GALLERY LIMITS GROUP SIZE
In order to improve entrance flow, and to adhere to new security regulations, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence now accepts group reservations up to a max of 30 persons. Larger groups have to be split in two, with a 30 minute gap between the two entrances. Music Celebrations will of course plan this carefully with larger groups that want to include the Uffizi so that the half hour gap is not a problem.

NEW OFFICIAL RULES RE GROUPS VISITING VATICAN MUSEUM
Groups must have a reservation to visit the Vatican Museum (Sistine Chapel, etc.). In effect since January 2nd, 2008, here below are the new official rules that all tour operators must follow when visiting the Vatican Museum:

Open: 08:30 / Last entrance 15:45 / Close: 18:00

New reservation time ranges:
A. 08:30-09:30
B. 09:30-10:30
C. 10:30-11:30
D. 11:30-12:30
E. 12:30-13:30
F. 13:30-14:30
G. 14:30-15:45

The new booking fee is EUR 5.00 per person in addition to the entrance fee.

Booking conditions:
o Reservations can no longer be cancelled free of charge. Once booked, a cancellation fee of EUR 5.00 per person will be charged.
o It is possible to modify the number of visitors ONLY ONCE. The drop-off cannot exceed 10% of the original passenger count and any reduction, even within the 10% limit, incurs a EUR 5.00 per person cancellation fee. Reductions of more than 10% of the original reservation incur cancellation fee of EUR 5.00 + the entrance fee per person.
o Minimum number of passengers for a reservation is 5.
o In regards to the specific booking time, the Vatican Museums will allow a flexibility of 10 minutes. After 10 minutes the group will lose its reservation and will have to get in line.

By DAN REED, USA TODAY
Feb. 19, 2008

Americans flying to Europe in spring will be paying more — in some cases, a lot more — largely because of skyrocketing fuel costs.

An analysis for USA TODAY of ticket sales through Sabre, the world’s largest distribution system, shows that the average price paid through Jan. 31 for U.S.-Europe air travel in April or May was 6.9% higher than during the comparable periods in 2007.

The analysis looked at round-trip sales regardless of fare categories.

Travelers are paying those higher prices despite a 10.3% expansion of trans-Atlantic flying capacity by the airlines. Typically, when the supply of a product rises, prices rise little, if at all.

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Exploring the unique chemistry of Europe’s most innovative culture

By Clive Irving
updated 11:26 p.m. MT, Sun., Jan. 20, 2008

You can learn a lot about Spanish history by looking at a plate of paella. First, consider the large bowl it’s often served in, shallow and a bit wok-like, as well as the larger one it’s cooked in — both are derived from a Roman utensil. (The very word paella is said to come from patella, Latin for “pan.”) Then there’s the rice, which came to Spain in the eighth century, imported by the Moors, who planted it in the wetlands at the edge of the freshwater Albufera lagoon, south of the port of Valencia. The orangy stain on the rice comes from saffron, which the Arabs found in Persia and began cultivating in Spain in the tenth century. And finally, there are the olive oil and peppers, both native to the Iberian Peninsula, and the meat — chicken and/or rabbit — cheap and local, but elevated to succulence by the chemistry of the pan.

I tend to do a lot of reflecting with the help of gastric juices (after all, what is the point of travel if you don’t salivate over the local dishes?), and this, the paella insight, came as I was enjoying a takeaway street version of the dish, lowly but adequate, from a popular joint next to the Central Market in Valencia. Paella lore is as riven with disputes about ingredients and cooking method as it is ancient, but one thing is sure: Valencia was where the concoction evolved.

Full Article Here

Several staff members at Music Celebrations recently participated in our annual “FAM Tour”, which took us to Budapest, Eisenstadt & Vienna in preparation of the big 2009 Haydn year.

Highlights of the time in Budapest were visits to wonderful venues including the Liszt Hall, St. Margaret’s School, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Mathias Church and the Hungarian Culture Center.

Highlights of Eisenstadt were visits to Esterhazy Palace, the Haydnsaal, Haydn’s house, and Bergkirche (where Haydn’s body is laid to rest).

Highlights of Vienna included the House of Music, the Hofburg with its collection of musical instruments, Schonbrunn Palace, Vienna Konzerthaus (Haydn Festival venue) and the Piaristenkeller restaurant, where we donned hats from the Hapsburg Empire era.

We are all very excited about the 2009 year and exciting Haydn Festivals we are organizing. All will be fantastic events!

By Rick Steves
Tribune Media Services

(Tribune Media Services) — Each summer, Europe greets a stampede of sightseers and shoppers with eager cash registers. Before jumping into the peak-season pig pile, consider the advantages of an off-season trip.

Given the current weakness of our dollar overseas, the potential price-savings of an off-season trip are enough to brighten a gray winter day. Airfares are often hundreds of dollars less. With fewer crowds in Europe, you’ll sleep cheaper. Many fine hotels drop their prices, and budget hotels have plenty of vacancies.

To save some money on hotels in the off-season, arrive late without a reservation, notice how many empty rooms they have (look for keys on the rack), and give the receptionist an excuse to win your business with a deep discount. Explain that you’re a senior (hosteller, student, artist, whatever) with a particular price limit, and bargain from there.

Full Article Here

By Rick Steves
Tribune Media Services

(Tribune Media Services) — Bella Italia, my favorite country in Europe, is a wonderful work in progress. Here’s a look at what to expect in 2008.

Italy is gung-ho for restricted traffic zones in its city centers. This is great for pedestrians, but not for drivers who are finding $100 fines in their mail when they arrive home. If you drive in Rome, Florence, Milan, Lucca, Siena, San Gimignano, Orvieto or Verona — in restricted areas marked by a Zona Traffico Limitato sign — your car’s license plate will be photographed and you can be fined without ever being stopped by a cop. Pay attention to signs, get parking advice from your hotelier, and park outside restricted areas.

With a revolution brewing among the throngs of tourists stung by the Vatican Museum’s stingy hours, the museum has agreed to stay open longer in 2008: Monday through Saturday 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (last ticket sold at 4:00 p.m.); as usual, it’ll be closed on Sunday except for the last Sunday of the month, when it’s free and open 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (last ticket sold at 12:30 p.m.). While some Catholics would love a private audience with the pope, those passed away with John Paul II — Pope Benedict XVI doesn’t do them.

Full Article Here

By Rick Steves
Tribune Media Services

(Tribune Media Services) — Jolly olde England and the Emerald Isle of Ireland continue to enchant and entice, even with the pound whomping the dollar nearly two to one. Here’s what to expect if you visit in 2008.

Full Article Here

We really enjoyed our tour to central Europe and all the performances. We were especially pleased with the audiences’ response to our singing. I thank you all for everything that you did behind the scenes to make this a really memorable experience for all of us. It was only once we were in each country that we could begin to fathom how much preparation was done to make things run so smoothly. You seem to have an excellent network of people to carry out the tours with such aplomb.

It was exciting to sing in churches with such history! Mátyás Church in Budapest, Karlskirche in Vienna, and St. Nicholas in Prague were all very impressive venues and each had excellent acoustics.

Our tour manager, Patrick, was really first class. He was professional in every way and did his best to accommodate everything we needed, and always very cheerfully. While he was very friendly with the students, he maintained a certain professional distance that was very intelligent.

I will be glad to serve as a reference.

Christine Jordanoff, Duquesne University Voices of Spirit

ROME - The restored ruins of two opulent Roman villas and private thermal baths will open to the public Saturday, along with a 3-D reconstruction that offers a virtual tour of the luxurious residences discovered in downtown Rome.

The 19,375-square-foot complex, dating from the second to fourth centuries, features well-preserved mosaic and marble floors, bathtubs and collapsed walls that archaeologists believe belonged to a domus — the richly decorated residences of Rome’s wealthy and noble families.

“We found part of a residential high-class neighborhood, where probably senators and knights used to live,” archaeologist Paola Valentini said.

Full Article Here

Les Nouvelles De Paris — dollar be damned, visit now!

With the dollar under the kind of pressure that would make even the crispiest crème brûlée crumble, this may not seem like the ideal time for a Paris fling. But there’s so much to see and do in the City of Light—and so much that’s new—that it almost seems unfair to let the Parisians have all the fun.

Paris is still cheaper than many international cities like London, or even Moscow. In fact, the number of Americans traveling to Paris annually hasn’t dropped off so much as their spending habits. The French Government Tourist Office’s Patrice Doyon says “the depressed dollar” has slowed growth, but Americans are still visiting—they’re just spending less. “They might go to a three-star hotel instead of a four-star hotel,” he says. “Or do less shopping.” But why not go against the grain—after all, the French have made a national sport out of doing just that—and go all out?

Few cities are as well-positioned for an exercise in indulgence as Paris, which is for many still the standard of luxury and culture against which other cities are measured. That said, if you know where to go, you can get more for your inflated euro in the French capital than you might think. Because Parisian luxury is not merely a tale of flamboyance and creature comforts, as in Las Vegas or Dubai, but about quality and authenticity of experience.

Full Article Here

SCHENGEN, Luxembourg — In a small cafe overlooking the river where a landmark EU agreement abolishing border checks was signed 22 years ago, locals mused on life in a Europe without frontiers.
“I find it great, free movement. Always pulling out the papers, stopping at the border, that’s not a good thing,” said Frenchman Georges Klein, a retired chef.

Klein knows all about it: Hailing from a French village just across the border from Schengen, he commuted to work to this hamlet in southern Luxembourg for 40 years before retiring and drawing his pension in France.

On Tuesday, envoys from 25 European member states descend on this village of several hundred inhabitants to celebrate the inclusion this week of nine new countries, most of them ex-Communist states in eastern Europe, into the Schengen borderless zone.

For the new eastern members, Friday’s expansion marks one of the final steps in their transition from oppressed Soviet satellites to full-fledged EU members.

Full article here

CURRENT MEMBERS: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Greece, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden.

NEWCOMERS: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia. Checks at airports to be dismantled in March, 2008.

OTHERS TO JOIN: Switzerland and Liechtenstein expected to join in Nov. 2008.

For Italians, the collapse of a 16th-century wall on Rome’s Palatine Hill was symbolic. Blaming the 2005 cave-in on budget cuts by the center-right Berlusconi government, many felt that the nation’s inability to protect its heritage signaled that the country too was crumbling. That era may be over now, but the practice of exploiting Rome’s cultural heritage for political gain is not.

Just this week Rome’s mayor, Walter Veltroni, and Italy’s vice premier and culture minister Francesco Rutelli gave journalists a sneak preview of the latest in a string of newly unveiled ancient discoveries on the Palatine Hill: four frescoed rooms in the 1st-century B.C. palace belonging to Augustus, who later became Rome’s first emperor. The rooms have been restored to perfection and will go on view to the public next March.

Last month Veltroni and Rutelli unveiled another gem on the Palatine Hill: the “Lupercale,” the ancient grotto where, legend has it, a she-wolf nursed Rome’s founder, Romulus, and his twin brother, Remus. The showing of the Lupercale delighted Italians with the suggestion that the legend might be true. But while the romantics were studying the mythology, the cynics were asking questions about just why the finds were being shown off at that time. The grotto, after all, was discovered last January, during the restoration of Augustus’s palace and the iconic collapsed wall. Back then Irene Iacopi, the archeologist in charge of the Palatine Hill, said she discovered the cavern, which is covered with frescoes, niches and seashells, after inserting a 52-foot probe into the ground. So why did it take almost a year for the authorities to make a public announcement about the find?

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When Erik Torkells told his sister, Molly, he’d take her anywhere in the world as a 40th-birthday present, she picked Las Vegas. Clearly, there was work to be done.

by Erik Torkells

My sister and I spent our formative travel experiences together, most of which involved long family RV trips around the western U.S. But while I got bit by the travel bug, even becoming the lucky editor of this magazine, Molly never traveled much. She found plenty of excitement in getting married, moving across the country (and back), having two kids, and starting a teaching career.

For her 40th birthday, I thought it’d be fun to take her somewhere. After all, the only times she had left the U.S. were on a graduation cruise to Ensenada and a family drive to Vancouver. “Think about where you’d like to go!” I e-mailed her. “London? Iceland? Tokyo?” I was feeling like Brother of the Year. A few days later, she e-mailed her choice. I took a few deep breaths, and pointed out that while, yes, it was her birthday, and yes, I’d said she could choose the destination, the idea was to go somewhere she’d never been–basically, anywhere but Las Vegas.

Molly thought about it some more and realized she was intimidated by the unknown: different languages, passport bureaucracy, foreign currency, and so on. She said she needed to get over her fear, and that we could go to Europe. She’d let me decide exactly where.

I chose Amsterdam because it’s so easy to navigate, making it the perfect place to dip a toe in–besides, it’s where I went on my first trip to Europe. And then we’d go to Paris, because it’s Paris.

If you were to ask her about the experience now, a few months after the trip, she’d probably say that it was discombobulating being the student, not the teacher–let alone having her little brother be the one in charge. For six days, I was a cross between George Patton and Napoleon Bonaparte. We didn’t just see Amsterdam and Paris: We conquered them.

Any little brother worth his salt torments his sister long after he should’ve stopped. In that spirit, here, for her review, are my 11 lessons on how to explore a city.

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Tour guide Hans-Georg Baumgartner in his role as the Night Watchman in Rothenburg, Germany. Baumgartner gives tourists a taste of what life was like centuries ago in the medieval walled town, while carrying a hellebarde, a long, hooked spear that watchman used for protection while making their nightly rounds.

ROTHENBURG OB DER TAUBER, Germany - Cloaked in black and brandishing a deadly medieval weapon, Hans-Georg Baumgartner strides purposefully into Market Square at dusk. The crowd parts — not out of fear, but fascination. Cameras flash.

Meet the Night Watchman, a lowly figure in this town centuries ago, but in Baumgartner’s incarnation a tour guide with a rock-star aura and a wit so calculatingly clever he’s been called a medieval Jerry Seinfeld.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Baumgartner’s Watchman tour has helped make Rothenburg — Germany’s best-preserved walled town and the jewel of the medieval trade route known as the Romantic Road — one of the country’s most popular tourist sites.

Rick Steves, the ubiquitous Europe travel impresario savvy in what American tourists will pay to see, calls the watchman tour “flat-out the most entertaining hour of medieval wonder anywhere in Germany.”

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2009 marks the bicentennial of Felix Mendelssohn. The following article was found on CNN and pays tribute to the musical accomplishments of Felix during his lifetime. In 2009, we will be promoting the American Celebration of Music in Germany, highlighting Mendelssohn sites in Leipzig.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)

Areas of expertise: Piano, organ and orchestra (performance and composition)

Notable achievement: His “Wedding March,” which has survived over a century of rising divorce rates and overpriced wedding planners

Secret to his success: Nicest guy in classical music

Widely regarded as the 19th-century equivalent of Mozart, German composer Felix Mendelssohn was musically precocious at an early age. Mendelssohn began taking piano lessons at age six, made his first public performance at age nine, and wrote his first composition (that we know of) when he was 11. By the time he turned 17, he had completed his Overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” one of the Romantic period’s best-known, most-loved works of classical music.

Then, in 1835, Mendelssohn’s father died, which (just like Wolfy) came as a crushing blow to the composer. But rather than sending him into an alcohol-induced stupor, the experience motivated Felix to finish his oratorio, “St. Paul,” which had been one of his father’s dying requests. From there, he went on to compose important and popular works, including the “Wedding March” (though he probably wouldn’t appreciate those cheesy “here comes the bride” lyrics). In 1843, at age 34, Mendelssohn founded the Conservatory of Music in Leipzig, where he taught composition with fellow musical great Robert Schumann.

The other nine here

The South Coast Youth Symphony Orchestra from Orange County recently toured Italy, performing in the American Celebration of Music in Italy concert series festival. While on tour, the Youth Symphony performed to very receptive audiences in Rome, Florence, and Treviso.

Music Celebrations performed flawlessly on the execution of our Italy tour. The concert venues were well chosen for their location and acoustics and all of our concerts were well publicized. Our tour manager was very professional. She knew our orchestra’s needs and always looked for ways to serve us and made sure we were having the best experience. The highlights of the tour were the visits to Cremona and Venice. The young musicians loved Venice! The staff at Music Celebrations are the best in the business! I look forward to our next tour with MCI and I am always happy to be a reference.

Rocky Lee, Music Director, South Coast Youth Symphony Orchestra