Montana State symphonies perform in Japan

BOZEMAN - Music is often called a universal language. It was the common thread tying 91 Montana State University students and faculty to their musical counterparts in Japan as they performed together during spring break.

MSU's wind symphony and symphony orchestra, both housed in the College of Arts and Architecture's School of Music, spent nine days in Japan rehearsing and performing with top musicians across the country - with the help of Google Translate, singing and gesturing to communicate. The trip was the largest to date that the School of Music has taken overseas, said Tobin Stewart, symphony orchestra director and music professor.

Japan is home to a world-class symphonic culture, where most public schools and universities have a dedicated wind symphony, compete on a national scale and perform in concert halls with more than 1,000 audience members, said Wonki Lee, who grew up in Tokyo and spearheaded the trip as assistant professor of saxophone in MSU's School of Music.

"I grew up experiencing that musical culture, and I wanted my students to experience that," Lee said. "They started playing better right away. Their hearing got better, and they started playing at the highest level."

Thirty-eight students in the wind symphony, directed by music professor Nathan Stark, performed in Tokyo with the Kunitachi College of Music and the Dokkyo Junior and Senior High School, which is Lee's alma mater. Each symphony rehearsed individually throughout the school year before coming together during spring break and practicing complex pieces like "Fountain Creek Fanfare," which MSU students recorded years prior for composer Jack Stamp's CD "Gavorkna!" During their trip, students also received one-on-one time with the director of the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, which is one of the world's premiere wind ensembles and is comparable to the New York Philharmonic in the U.S, Lee said.

"We were getting feedback from some of the top musicians in the world," said Sylvie Black, senior music major and percussionist who has spent four years in the wind symphony. "Knowing that was the standard I had to meet was a really big motivator for me to focus on perfecting the pieces technique wise and note wise: How could I play it better?"

Black experienced the full spectrum of percussion instruments across her symphony's 16 pieces of music, from snare drums and marimba to the tambourine and cymbals. She has spent 11 years studying percussion but learned new techniques from Japanese college students, such as playing the snare drum sitting down.

She said she is especially grateful for the experience abroad because an anonymous donor approached the School of Music and offered to cover one student's travel costs, and Black was selected. She plans to use the skills she learned to pursue her dream of performing in the orchestra pit on Broadway and, in the meantime, find a position teaching band in her hometown of Springfield, Missouri, after graduating from MSU in May.

India Shaskan, a junior studying applied mathematics, said the trip rekindled her pride in being a performing musician. She is one of 45 members in MSU's symphony orchestra, many of whom are non-music majors, who performed in concert with the Kumamoto and Ibaraki universities. They played four pieces of American and Japanese music, ranging from "The Cowboys" overture by John Williams to the whimsical "Spirited Away Suite" by Joe Hisaishi. MSU students rehearsed and performed the music in Bozeman prior to their trip.

"The beauty of performing it more than once is that you grow with that piece of music," Stewart said. "Students listen more, they watch more and they pay attention to each other more."

Shaskan learned to play the tuba in sync with her Japanese counterpart, which was a challenge considering most American symphonies only have one tuba player and a lower standard pitch than Japanese symphonies. Her previous experience with the unique pitch came from competitive marching band in San Antonio, Texas, where she said she often spent more hours in rehearsal than at home.

The spring break trip wasn't her first overseas, but she said she was touched by the friendships she built with Japanese students in a short amount of time. Shaskan and an Ibaraki University student exchanged a dollar bill and a 100-yen coin as a promise to visit each other's countries - they hope to meet again in Japan this summer.

"It's amazing that despite not being a music major, I had the opportunity to do something that music majors around the world would only dream of," said Shaskan, who has played in the symphony orchestra for two and a half years.