US high school choir and orchestra to perform in Vietnam

Phillips Exeter Academy’s Concert Choir and Chamber Orchestra will travel through major cities in Vietnam to perform concerts of classical Western music and Vietnamese folk songs during the 14-day “Peace and Innovation” tour.

The ensembles will partner with musicians and vocalists from the Vietnam National Academy of Music and HCM City Conservatory of Music.

They will perform in Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An and HCM City.   

The tour will be held to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Vietnam.

The 28-voice Concert Choir, under the direction of Kristofer Johnson, and the 24-person Chamber Orchestra, with conductors Peter Schultz and Rohan Smith, will perform American and European selections by: Leonard Bernstein, John Philip Sousa, Scott Joplin, Dolly Parton, Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Francis Poulenc, Gabriel Fauré, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, Arcangelo Corelli, William Billings and more.

They have also prepared two Vietnamese folk songs, Trong Com and Ly Keo Chai, arranged especially for the tour by Vietnamese musician and composer Van-Anh Vo.

PEA ensembles will perform two concerts in Hanoi on March 10 and 11, at the Hanoi Cheo Theatre (No.15, Nguyen Dinh Chieu Street, Hai Ba Trung District) and the Vietnam National Academy of Music (77 Hao Nam, Dong Da District), respectively.

At the Hanoi Cheo Theatre, Phillips Exeter Academy’s Concert Choir and Chamber Orchestra will open with diverse modern American and European selections. Actors and musicians of the Hanoi Cheo Theatre, under the direction of Director and Favored Artist Thanh Ngoan, will then perform.

The concert will end with a joint performance by PEA and Cheo musicians of Duong Truong Duyen Phan and He Moi That Lung xanh.

At the Vietnam National Academy of Music, musicians from the academy’s Traditional Vietnamese Orchestra will open the concert with three traditional Vietnamese selections, followed by a diverse program of European and American music by PEA’s ensembles.

The concert will end with joint performances by the PEA Concert Choir and 10 singers from the Vietnam National Academy of Music: Three songs from Bernstein’s Candide and Trong Com.

Both concerts are free and open to the public. For tickets, contact the Vietnam National Academy of Music or the US Embassy in Hanoi.

Phillips Exeter Academy (www.exeter.edu) is a coeducational, independent school, located in Exeter, New Hampshire, USA. Founded in 1781 by John Phillips, Exeter has a tradition of academic excellence, a distinguished faculty, and a long history of educating young people to find their place in the world.

It originated the system of instruction known as Harkness teaching in 1931. In the spirit of the school’s charter to foster goodness and knowledge, a Phillips Exeter Academy education is free to any admitted student whose family income is US$75,000 or less and the diverse student body comes from a variety of geographic, economic, racial and religious backgrounds.

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