For many years now, I've been writing about San Domenico School in
Marin, a small high school for girls, with a music program "on the side"
(http://www.sandomenico.org/page.cfm?p=5).  If you're tired of vile
predictions about the future of classical music, spend a few minutes
here to hear evidence to the contrary.

The Virtuoso Program, founded by Faith France on the model of Vivaldi
and the Ospedale della Pieta, has sponsored scores of girls (including
many Asian and Asian-American ones) over the years, producing musicians
such as Hai-ye Ni, associate principal cellist of the NY Phil.

In recent years, George Thomson, assistant to Kent Nagano at the Berkeley
Symphony, has been running the Virtuoso Program.  What can he and some
high school girls (taking music only as part of the curriculum) do?  Link
to http://s17.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=36NAZE9C3K8DA2IZI8TTKBCNAV to hear
the kids in the finale of Op.  59, No.  3, last Sunday.  (The six-minute,
5 Mb MP3 file should download in 30 seconds with DSL.) How "innocent"
is the environment for this great performance?  The burst of applause
40 seconds *before* the end is a good indication...:) It's like cheers
going up at the end of an aria, with the orchestra still busy playing.

Not so incidentally, if you want to share music online, yousendit.com
is a great way to do it, allowing free file uploads, to the max of 1G.

Janos Gereben
www.sfcv.org
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