| NEWS
| December 1, 2005
Songs in Flight
UTA Chamber Singers travel to
Austria to give concerts and see the sights
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| The Shorthorn: Manikandan Sachidanandan |
| Jing Ling-Tam, music professor
and choral studies director, left, instructs
while vocal performance sophomore Hillary Malone, from
right, and vocal performance freshmen Geri Isaacs and
Reagan Rucker sing Wednesday in the Fine Arts Building. |
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By Alyssa
Fry
The Shorthorn staff
As music education junior Ahunna Ikpeowo wrote a $465 check for
the remaining cost of her plane ticket to Austria, she said she
doesn’t really like flying.
Ikpeowo will leave with the UTA Chamber Singers Dec. 7 to perform
as special guests at six performances held in two Austrian cities.
“I’m sort of nervous for the performance,” she
said. “I’m nervous for everyone because a lot of us
are new, but I’m sure we’ll do fine.”
Some students started raising money last spring, when the choir’s
director, music professor Jing Ling-Tam, announced the trip.
A concert will be held Saturday in Irons Recital Hall as a last
chance to raise funds for the trip.
Ling-Tam was a guest lecturer for a week last February in Salzburg,
Austria, where the choir will perform four of its concerts. The
three Salzburg choirs she worked with during this time are the ones
that invited Ling-Tam and the chamber choir to the city.
Once Ling-Tam agreed to the trip, professional friends in the city
of Graz invited the choir to perform there.
In between its first two performances in Salzburg and the next two
in Graz, the choir will spend a day in Vienna to sightsee.
“I declined a concert there because it’s too much singing
for them. They need a break,” Ling-Tam said. “I think
we’re going to tour the opera house and see the museums.”
The purpose of this trip is to educate the students musically, culturally
and personally, Ling-Tam said.
“When I first went to Europe in 1987, I thought it was totally
awesome,” she said. “Salzburg is the birthplace of Mozart,
and Beethoven lived in Vienna, so they’ll get to see these
places they learned about in class.”
Voice performance junior Jesse Enderle said that as a member of
the choir in 2000, he traveled to Hong Kong with Ling-Tam, as a
guest choir in a choral festival.
Enderle, who has never been to Europe before, said he started raising
money last spring, and that he’s not anxious about the performances.
“I’m excited, but not nervous,” he said. “You
have your normal performance anxiety, but I’m not scared of
flying.”
Enderle said the trip will be performance-intensive, and that other
factors such as the weather and staying with host families might
stress the students and negatively affect their health.
“We’re staying in other people’s homes, and the
climate will be colder,” he said. “There’s a little
bit of danger of becoming sick with all these changes. With singing,
you use your body. You don’t have an instrument. That’s
why it’s important for us to keep up our health.”
The university has been good about preparing the students for the
trip, he said.
“We met with the Travel Abroad office for a mandatory meeting,”
he said. “They were just telling us how to conduct ourselves,
to make sure we get enough sleep and to enjoy the trip.”
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UTA CHAMBER SIGNERS FUNDRAISER
Where: Irons Recital Hall
When: 4 p.m. Saturday
Cost: $10 for adults. $5 for students
with an ID and senior citizens.
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