Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008 - (Page 36)

Clockwise from top: Performing at Beijing University; the Summer Palace; which dates back to the Jin Dynasty; the Glee Club quartet of Chase Philpotts ’09, Chris Chen ’08, Brad Woodward ’07, and Corrado Altomare ’09 perform; Sametz accepts a gift to the “honorable guests” of a replica chariot from the Terracotta Warriors; Gina Guzzon ’09 and Kevin Jacobs ’10 rest on the long trip from Nanjing to Shanghai. 10 consecutive semesters, and toured with them in Vienna, Hungary, Eastern Germany, and the Czech Republic. Though it wasn’t his ﬁrst time touring internationally, it was his first time experiencing it with such a diverse group. “This was another way to reach out. People in the Choral Union and other alumni have expressed an interest in joining us in the past for these international tours,” Woodward says. The idea of inviting alumni to join a Choral Arts tour can be traced back to the Choral Arts 130th anniversary reunion weekend in April 2005, which also celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Choral Union (an organization of 150 that includes students, faculty, staff, and members of the Lehigh Valley community) and Steven “Doc” Sametz’s 25th anniversary leading Choral Arts at Lehigh. A key outcome of that weekend was a student-led revival of the men’s Glee Club. (Since that time, a women’s ensemble, Dolce, has also started.) The 130th anniversary weekend featured a special concert held at the Zoellner Arts Center in which the University Choir was joined by dozens of returning alumni. “After the 130th anniversary, there was a renewed sense of connection with our alums, our history. For the China trip, we wanted to maintain that,” Sametz, the Ronald J. Ulrich Professor of Music and LU Choral Arts director, recalls. “We wanted to open the experience of international touring to all our alumni and to our terrific community singers. Choral Arts has always been a successful community outreach program—one of Lehigh’s best. By including alums, Choral Union singers, Choir, and Glee Club, we were able to share our community of music with over 8,000 Chinese listeners at our concerts. We felt like rock stars, with all the cheering audiences, but we also felt like a family.” On May 8, 2007, singers old and young descended on South Mountain for one last rehearsal before their departure. While some were coming back just days after their ﬁnal exams, others were returning as many as 30 years after their last exam at Lehigh. Many of the returning alumni found things very different. Zoellner is a far cry from Lamberton Hall, the place the Choir called home decades earlier, or Grace Hall, where the Glee Club once held rehearsals. Van Dugteren and others were slightly intimidated by the lack of preparation prior to the trip. “We were joining a group that has sung together for an entire year and had learned the music to the point of memorization,” Van Dugteren says. “The alumni, in some cases, 36 lehigh alumni bulletin

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008

Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008 Contents From the President's Desk Mailbox On Campus Research Arts & Culture Sports Ugly is in the Eye of the Beholder Fitch's Law of Motion A Blessing to the Community The Amidonian Acclamation China Trip Bridges Cultures, Generations From the Publisher's Desk Alumni News The Last Word

Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008

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