Musica Vesuviana 2009
A Journal

After all the anticipation, June 24 had finally arrived!! Here we were at Logan Airport, saying good by to our families as we headed for our gate to board our flight to Rome. We were all excited and a little nervous contemplating the adventure that was before us. While some of us had visited Italy on previous occasions, many had never been overseas--much less visited one of the most beautiful places in Italy: the Amalfi Coast.

After our overnight flight and final connection to Naples we arrived tired but full of wonder at the new scenery, architecture and language.

Our first "taste" of Italy came on the bus ride from the Naples airport to our hotel, the Fondazione Passarelli, in the picturesque seacoast town of San Marco. Since this area is famous for its buffalo mozzarella (yes it is really made from buffalo milk!), we stopped at a roadside store and tasted what real mozzarella is like. This was the first of many delicious "firsts" we were to have during our stay.

When we arrived at the Fondazione, we were greeted by a stately building in a bucolic setting away from the town's main street and surrounded by beautiful and exotic trees and plants.

Birds were chirping everywhere and the occasional lizard flitted around us. A short walk from the center of town, the Fondazione boasts its own gardens, swimming pool and within another short walk, its own private beach.

To try to reset our biological clock, (we were now 6 hours ahead of the US but had been traveling for about 18 hours), we decided to start our new schedule and establish our new sleep patterns. Since it was about 5 PM and not yet dinner time (Italians eat much later especially during the summer months), we took a walk into town where we had another delicious "first", the gelato (Italian ice cream).

We also walked to the beach, a spectacular vista of sparkling blue water, blue sky and soft sand. 

The next day dawned sunny and warm-a weather pattern that was to remain with us for the duration of our stay.

Unless we were on an excursion, our schedule would be pretty similar: breakfast, morning lessons in the Italian language with Ms. Teresa Gallo, rehearsals and music theory classes with Mr. D'Agostino, Ms. Christo and Mr. Tassone, lectures by visiting artists followed by lunch and then off to the beach for the afternoon.

We would then return for some more rehearsing/lessons and then supper.

Also, students in the afternoon played soccer and went to the pool. Students also took advantage of some free afternoon time to have their own impromptu "jam sessions"�to the delight of the workers as well as the other guests of the Fondazione. Our curfew varied depending on the next day's wake up call. But generally we were all in our rooms by 11:00 PM.

The Fondazione provided us our three daily meals and even packed us bag lunches when we went on our excursions. While our breakfasts were not as varied as we would have liked, our lunches and suppers were full meals with some type of pasta followed by a meat and vegetable dish and rounded off with either fresh fruit or dessert. See FACEBOOK PHOTOS . KENNY

The town we were staying in, the gorgeous San Marco di Castellabate, gave us many oppurtunities to walk around and and shop.
On our first day at the beach, we were surprised to be greeted by a lifeguard, Angelo, who spoke perfect English with an almost NY accent. He had been born in the US and moved to Italy about twenty years ago.

He immediately adopted our students and really looked after them on the beach. He gave our students many facts about life in Italy and taught them a lot about the local area. He played water Frisbee, soccer and introduced our students to granita, real Italian ice, which was sold right on the beach!

Angelo also helped us negotiate with the many vendors who wandered about the beach selling everything from jewelry to tattoos!!We sensed that he missed a lot about America and being with so many young people from the states made him feel sadly nostalgic. (We were ecstatic when on the fourth of July he surprised us with an American flag, fastened to his lifeguard seat!!

Since we had a performance scheduled four days after our arrival (Sunday, June 28), we rehearsed quite a bit from Thursday to Saturday. We were greatly honored to have been invited to perform at the very famous Ravello Music Festival.

Ravello is 350 meters (1148 ft.) above the sea and it commands an incredible panorama of the famous Amalfi Coast. Among some famous people inspired by Ravello are the composers Richard Wagner and Edvard Grieg, painters William Turner and Mir�, and authors D.H. Lawrence, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal, who owned a home there until 2003. Today it is a favorite vacation spot for many Hollywood stars.

We performed to appreciative outdoor audiences who were literally dancing in the streets to our music.

Our first performance was at the Piazzetta di San Giovanni del Toro.Not even a surprise thunderstorm could dampen our early evening performance at the Giardini della Principessa di Piemonte.

Between performances, we had free time for shopping, exploring, sight seeing and of course to try different flavors of gelato.

We returned to San Marco exhausted but happy for having visited one of the most magical places in Italy. To see our photo and "billing" for the festival go to:
http://www.ravellofestival.com/ahs.html

To read a local press release (in Italian) about our concert in Ravello, go to:

http://www.casertanews.it/public/articoli/200906/art_20090628080346.htm

 One of the highlights of our first full week was the multi-media lesson on Neapolitan music with a professor from the famous Naples Conservatory. Naples has a long and brilliant opera tradition and the works of many famous composers such as Pergolesi, Cimarosa, and Bellini have been performed at its renowned San Carlo Opera House. Mingled with this great operatic heritage, is also a fabulous body of popular Neapolitan songs. In fact, in the USA, the best-loved Italian songs such as O Sole Mio, Santa Lucia, Return to Sorrento are Neapolitan songs.

In her lecture, professor Anita Pesce gave us a short history of the Neapolitan popular song's development over the years as well as the influence these songs have exerted all over the world. (Elvis Presley's famous It's Now or Never is none other than Return to Sorrento with new lyrics and set to a Latin beat).
It is also interesting to note that famous opera singers such as Luciano Pavarotti and Enrico Caruso (who was from Naples) made the Neapolitan song a part of their repertoire.

Joining professor Pesce, was Luciano Catapano an excellent guitarist and singer who was able to illustrate many of the examples of which the professor spoke. Having a live performer made the lecture much more relevant. At this time we were joined at the Fondazione by a group of younger Italian students who were there as campers. Although somewhat younger than our students, we were able to share some activities such as line dancing in the outdoor disco on the premises and soccer games. The also attended our final concert. Another highlight of that week was our excursion to Naples.

One of Italy's oldest cities, Naples (from the Greek Neapolis, New City), was founded around the 8th century BC. Today it is a busy, congested city, which from its sumptuous villas to its overcrowded neighborhoods, pulses with life. Naples has many wonderful places to visit and we could only choose a few during our short stay.

The highlight however, was the famous Naples Conservatory. Most conservatories in Italy are named after famous Italian Composers. The one in Naples however, is named the Conservatorio San Pietro � Maiella (St. Peter at Maiella Conservatory). This is because it is housed in what was once a monastery, hence its name.

The conservatory is a beautiful building with the familiar monastery architecture, a courtyard containing exotic flora surrounded by great stone arches on all sides. The conservatory boasts one of the great music libraries of Europe with many original scores of famous composers.

It also houses a priceless instrument collection containing among other treasures, a harpsichord made by the famous violinmaker, Antonio Stradivarius.

(None of us knew that Stradivarius even made harpsichords!!) We also got to actually walk among the pipes of its huge organ.

On the morning of August 24, 79 A.D. the volcano, Mt. Vesuvius, exploded. The top part of the volcano's cone was blown off leaving the jagged-edged shape we see today. Smoke, mud, flames and burning stones shot up from the summit of the mountain, sending a rain of ash and rock through the surrounding countryside. The mud seeped down the sides of Vesuvius, swallowing nearby farms, orchards and villas. Pompeiians who could not escape were buried along with their all possessions. It wasn't until 1748 that archeologists began to uncover the forgotten city. Walking in Pompeii, we realized that we were walking down the same streets as its citizens did almost 2000 years ago. Because of its amazingly preserved state, we are able to get a real feel for daily life in the ancient city. We saw houses, taverns, an amphitheater (where our singers performed!), and plaster molds showing Pompeiians in agonizing positions trying to escape or shield themselves from the ashes and poison gases. Pompeii is truly an unforgettable sight!!Our Pompeii guide brought us to the Anpytheteater where our wonderful singers performed for us and many tourists.

After our tour of Pompeii, we visited a cameo factory, which is close by, where we watched cameos being carved by hand. Most of us took advantage of the factory's gift shop to purchase gifts for our friends and family. That night we celebrated Ms Christo's birthday with a special cake and we also had our show and tell where everyone got to show off purchases made thus far on the trip. Incidentally, by this time we all had become very familiar with the Fondazione, as well as the town of San Marco. It was such a safe place to be that everyone felt comfortable wandering around town, going for walks, shopping in the little specialty shops as well as the supermarkets. After a week in Italian language classes, our students got to test their knowledge by going to a local caf� and ordering in Italian, gelato and/or any of the other delicious pastries and drinks! We were grateful to Ms. Gallo who arranged our visit and assisted us at the caf�. (We were all very happy that we didn't test our language skills in a hardware store!!) Our next very memorable excursion was our day to trip to Rome. The capital of Italy, Rome is about a 3-4 hour bus ride north of San Marco. We left about 5 AM so that we could beat the traffic into Rome and returned very late at night. Visiting Rome in one day is a daunting task. With thousands of years of history encompassing archeology, architecture, religious and secular art, one could spend months there and not see it all. Choosing what to see was very difficult. We decided that some things were absolute "musts". These included: The Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica, the Coliseum, the Roman Forum and the Trevi Fountain.

  Since buses are not allowed near most of these sights, we traveled by subway, which was comfortable and convenient, and we walked and walked!! We returned completely exhausted but delighted with what we had seen in the "Eternal City".

On July 4, which in Italy is an ordinary day, we decided to celebrate to remind us of our American holiday. Ms Christo had brought American flag napkins and provided all of us with a souvenir postcard of Rome. As mentioned earlier, we were also greeted on the beach by our Italian-American lifeguard with an American flag. After dark we returned to the beach where we lit a bonfire and enjoyed delicious watermelon as well as an impromptu concert by Otto and Lucas.

For one of our performances, we were guests at the villa of a local music lover Mr. Guido Lamonea, who was ecstatic to have young musicians in his house to perform. Before our performance, he treated us to a delicious feast, which we thoroughly enjoyed. Before we left for the evening, he made us promise to return next year for an encore!!

The following day we visited Paestum and its museum. Paestum was founded by Greeks from Sybaris under the name of Poseidonia about 600 B.C. In the fourth century B.C. it passed into the hands of the Lucanians, and in 273 B.C. became a Roman colony. The ruins of Paestum lie on a plain nearby the Gulf of Salerno, a bay on the Tyrrhenian Sea. With its ancient temples and cemeteries, this site possesses the finest remains of Greek architecture on the mainland of Italy second only to the magnificent Greek temples in Sicily.

In the evening, we held our final concert the Fondazione. On a beautifully warm night, we performed outdoors to a very appreciative audience. Thanks to the efforts of our tech expert Gianni Gallo, we also had, via live streaming, an audience back in the USA. Gianni told us that 48 computers in the USA were tuned in to our performance! After the performance, many of our students stayed behind to join in the dancing with many in the audience.

During our last full day in San Marco, we took a fabulous walk along the beach until we reached the next town, Santa Maria.

Here we were able to enjoy another charming seaside town where we shopped, walked its quaint little streets and ate more gelato, before we walked back in time for lunch. Later that afternoon, we were invited for a very brief performance in a little piazza (with a promise to return next year!) in town where Gianni took some more live footage for our website. Sadly, we returned for dinner and the difficult chore of packing for next day's trip to the USA. Since we had a 7:15 AM flight and a long ride to the airport, we had to set our alarm clocks for 3:30 AM. As we stumbled onto our bus, we were thankful that we had packed our luggage the night before. After a quiet and sleepy ride to the airport we boarded our flight to Rome and our connection for our final flight to Boston where we arrived at Logan airport tired, an hour late, but full of memories that would stay with us for a long time.

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Faculty

		Tino D'Agostino (director) is the founder and director of Musica Vesuviana. Trained both in Italy and the US, Mr. D'Agostino brings a wealth of knowledge in traditional music as well as modern Jazz and Pop. As instrumental director at Arlington (MA) High School his ensembles have performed at All-State Conferences and tours of Italy. A noted clinician, he has presented workshops for music educators at Massachussets Music Educators Conferences and at Drum Festival, Montreal, CanadaBass. He has performed with Andrea Bocelli, Ivan Cattaneo in Italy and Mike Stern and Wayne Krantz in the US. He has published articles on Bass Guitar Magazine and Zon Guitars Magazine.
		Cheryl Christo (Instructor) is Director of Choral Activities at Arlington (MA) public schools. Her award-winning groups have appeared at All-State Conferences, as well as on international concert tours. She is well-versed in many different styles of music from Madrigals to Jazz. In addition to her choral-directing duties, Ms. Christo has been pianist and music co-director for many Broadway musicals. In 2004 she was a Massachusetts Teacher of the Year finalist
		Edoardo Pepe (ensemble instructor) lives in Salerno (Italy). composer,Jazz pianist, music teacher,arranger and piano tuner. He works as composer of sound tracks for films and he realizes musical multimedia applications in courses of music for secondary school. As arranger writes for "camera" formations, among the works, a history of the "Italian song" performed by the classical quartet of the pianist M° Tullio Forlenza.
		Anita Pesce lives in Naples, Italy. A pianist, music teacher, writer and composer, she is the author of many music books such as "Musica? Musica!", "L'Albero Dei Suoni", "Il Metro Musichevole", "Letteratura Fonografica".
		Pasquale Tassone (Instructor) studied at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan, has an honors diploma from the Chigiana Academy in Senia, Italy and PhD from Brandeis University. Mr. Tassone is a founding member of the LUMEN Contemporary Music Ensemble, a group of composers dedicated to the performance of new music in the Boston area. In June 2008, he retired as Fine Arts Director in the Arlington (MA) Public Schools.
		Terri Gallo lives in Gloucester, MA. She began teaching Italian in 1997 in the Gloucester (MA) Public School system, and eventually at Salem State College and at North Shore Community College. She is currently an Italian teacher in the Burlington Public School system, where she continues to provide students with quality instruction in Italian language and culture.

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