By Julie Smithers
When Lisgar Collegiate Institute’s senior band and orchestra left for a musical tour of China earlier this month they took with them instruments and books to enrich the lives of the people they would visit.
They returned home with a new appreciation for what it means to live in Canada, as well as a new sense of being a team that will make them better musicians.
In the nine days they were there, the students performed four concerts in schools and visited historical sites including the Great Wall of China.
Through this experience they learned a lot about their fellow band members and became a closer team, says Trudy Bradley, the head of Lisgar’s music program. She adds that this will make them better musicians.
“It’s one thing to sit in a rehearsal and practice the music but it is something else to be around each other all day every day for nine days. So we have gotten to know each other much better,” Bradley says.
The trip was planned after a teacher from Beijing visited a Lisgar music night a year ago and suggested the groups tour China. Many Lisgar students are of Chinese descent, so the school thought it was a great idea.
The students not only saw the tourists’ view of China, but also the poverty of a country trying to develop economically.
“We saw Beijing with the warts,” says Trudy Bradley, Lisgar’s music department head and the orchestra’s conductor.
“To see the juxtaposition of terrible poverty and immense wealth all wrapped up in one package within the same city and then realize it is still working is amazing,” says Charles Akben-Marchand, an OAC student and member of both the senior orchestra and band.
Many of the students and staff were shocked by the gap between the rich and the poor in and around Beijing. They recall seeing beautiful new buildings and gated complexes surrounded by shacks, homelessness and poverty unlike anything they have seen in Ottawa.
At a concert in Beijing for 800 people including government officials, the orchestra and band members made a small contribution to alleviating hardship. The concert was hosted by a Chinese school and sponsored by a Chinese publishing house.
It’s purpose was to help students of a poor Chinese school in an area recently hurt by an earthquake. The Lisgar group donated about 100 easy-to-read English books and the Chinese school hosting the concert gave money.
“You see great amounts of poverty around, so it’s neat to donate something even so small to help people,” says Marian Kremer, a member of the orchestra and band.
Denise Sun and Yi Liu were born in China and were among the students who went on the trip. Sun left China as a two year old and last visited five years ago. Liu immigrated to Canada seven years ago. Both Sun and Liu were astonished by the changes in their home country. They say there are many more fancy buildings, green spaces and a less visible presence of the military. They also noticed more of a gap between the rich and the poor than when they left.
“I didn’t recognize it at all,” says Sun about the new building developments and addition of trees in Beijing.
Liu thought his relatives still in China were exaggerating when they told him of the social and economic changes taking place. Upon visiting, he saw the new buildings, but he says he also saw a wider gap between the rich and poor than when he left.
“For my students who were originally born in China, it had a very big impact on them. You know, things really are much easier here,” Bradley says.
This is not the first trip abroad for the orchestra and band. Two years ago they traveled to Austria together.
Lisgar’s music program has a long history that dates back to the First World War. It became the first Canadian school to have an orchestra when students organized one to lift the spirits of classmates and staff who worried about their loved ones away at war. In recent years, the school’s 12 musical groups made two albums.