It didn't start out well. Within minutes of checking in at Boston's Logan International Airport, one of the 20 members of the UVM Concert Band had lost her camera. "I wasn't sure that was a good omen," reflected the group's conductor, Associate Professor D. Thomas Toner. "Little did I know that would be the only bad thing that would happen on our entire trip!" The "trip" was a ten-day tour of Europe over winter break to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the UVM Band.

Turning 100
The trip to Europe was Toner's idea. The conductor, who earned grants from the Dean's Professional Development Fund to study music in Ghana and Bali, wanted to take the group overseas since he joined the UVM faculty in 1995.

Toner recalled that Skip Vallee, a fellow former resident of Vermont's Franklin County, had been appointed Ambassador to Slovakia by President George Bush. Toner contacted the Ambassador last summer and arranged for the Embassy to schedule several concerts for the Band.

The first concert, on only their third day in Europe, was in a museum in Dolna Krupa, a small village about 30 minutes from the capital of Bratislava. As the group arrived, Embassy officials greeted them with the news that a local Slovak television station was about to arrive to do a story on the concert. The combination of jetlag, performing on an estate that had been a vacation spot for Beethoven and television cameras could have rattled the students, but they handled the pressure deftly, evoking a standing ovation from the capacity crowd.
 
 

Bratislava and beyond
The musical highlight of the tour was the day the group played a morning concert at the Slovak State Music Conservatory, followed by an evening concert at the Ambassador's official residence, known as "The Little White House." The UVM students found the music students of the Conservatory particularly receptive to the program of American music that featured Sousa marches, American folk songs, and, of course, "Moonlight in Vermont." The tenor of the evening concert was high society, as the Ambassador and his wife entertained diplomats, business people, and musicians from the capital city. After mingling with the guests in an after-concert reception, the group was given a tour of the residence by the Ambassador himself, concluding with a breathtaking view of the lights of Bratislava and its old castle from a rooftop perch.

 

While the group spent four days in Slovakia, it was hardly their only stopping point. The students visited Vienna, Budapest, Salzburg, Munich, and several smaller cities, getting a taste for the culture (and cuisine) of the area. This was particularly interesting to students like alto saxophonist Renée Lariviere, a senior political science major, and Thomas Martin, a sophomore history major. The opportunity for them to see, first-hand, some of the places they had studied in previous semesters gave them valuable insight.

 

"The students behaved in an exemplary manner," said Toner. "The tour director commented several times that she had never worked with a more punctual group—if you asked them to meet the bus at 9:00, they were already in the hotel lobby and ready to go at 8:45!" So many memories were made on the trip: demonstrations and organ concerts by Music Department Chair David Neiweem, who also accompanied the group on the trip; a trip into the salt mines near Berchtesgaden; two Mozart houses, in Vienna and in Salzburg; the Bavarian Alps; getting a backstage tour of the Passion Play Theater in Oberammergau; and the deeply moving speech by a clarinetist, and grand-daughter of Holocaust survivors, at the Jewish memorial at Dachau. "I am so proud of these students—they truly represented the best of what UVM has to offer."