A Concert for the Light of Life



Massimo La Rosa

On Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at 8:00pm, Massimo La Rosa, Principal Trombone of the prestigious Cleveland Orchestra will perform in a special benefit concert recital taking place in the Robert J. Werner Recital Hall, CCM Village, on the campus of the University of Cincinnati. The initiative is a collaboration of the Consulate of Italy in Detroit and University of Cincinnati-Conservatory of Music. All proceeds from ticket and LaRosa’s “Cantando” CD sales will benefit the A.N.F.E. organization and its Light of Life Fund, which helps families whose children with retinal disorders need urgent corrective eye surgery and treatment performed in the United States by Italian doctors. The children are born up to three months premature and early surgery can restore full or partial vision. To date, over 200 children have been helped. The Memorial Fund also pays to bring Italian doctors to Michigan to learn this surgical technique and assist the families with residency during the recovery process. The fund is operated by A.N.F.E., Associazione Nazionale Famiglie Emigrati, a non-profit organization founded in 1947 to assist and support the Italian community throughout the world. The concert in Cincinnati follows a previous one in April 2011 held at the Cleveland Museum of Art before an audience of over 300, which raised over $ 8,500 between ticket and CD sales, as well as donations. The success of the event quickly persuaded Marco Nobili, Consul of Italy in Detroit and Serena Scaiola, Vice Consul of Italy in Cleveland, to broaden the initial scope of the project, expanding it to the one in Cincinnati,  followed  by a performance at the Embassy of Italy in Washington D.C., and a grand finale at the “Teatro Olimpico” in Vicenza (Cleveland Sister City). “The response from the Cleveland community was simply too extraordinary to limit it to one concert only”, both Nobili and Scaiola point out. “Thanks to Massimo’s selfless commitment as well as the collaboration given us by the Conservatory, we are able to bring this marvelous event here in Cincinnati. This is important not only for the funds that will be donated as a result of the recital, but also to raise awareness regarding this affliction and its possible cure”, they concluded. “Massimo is very young and yet, has already established himself as a world class musician”, says Vice Consul Scaiola. “As Italians in Ohio, we all must be so proud of his engagement with the prestigious Cleveland Orchestra. I wish to thank him for lending us his superb talent for such a worthwhile cause, and invite everybody to join in our efforts to give a child the gift of eyesight”. The worthiness of the cause is obvious to LaRosa himself: “The idea to bring music to people to help others in need is very close to my heart and it feeds a desire to lend my talent to support our Italian community both locally and overseas. Knowing that the life of a child and their family will be changed for the better as a result of our efforts, is the greatest reward we can think of.”     



La Rosa in Cleveland (April 2011)

 Massimo La Rosa joined The Cleveland Orchestra as principal trombone in September 2007. He previously served as principal trombone of La Fenice Opera House in Venice from 1996 to 2007. He has performed as guest principal trombone with La Scala Opera House in Milan, the Santa Cecilia Symphonic Orchestra in Rome and the Teatro Comunale in Florence. Recently named “New Artist of the Month” by Musical America, he has released a solo album titled Cantando. Born in Palermo, Sicily in 1974, Mr. La Rosa grew up in a small town outside Palermo and began playing the trombone in the community band when he was nine years old. La Rosa is on the trombone faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and has also presented master classes and recitals at several American universities and conservatories including the Manhattan School of Music, the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Indiana University, De Paul University and the Juilliard School. He will be accompanied by Elizabeth DeMio, well-known as a collaborative pianist, recitalist and soloist in the Cleveland area.

This concert is co-sponsored by the Italian School Amici in Cincinnati. We invite everybody to consider participation to this special event: please purchase your tickets and spread the word in order to help a good cause. Grazie!

Event & Tickets information:

Tuesday, April 3, 2012, 8:00pm

Robert J. Werner Recital Hall

CCM Village, University of Cincinnati

290 CCM Blvd.Cincinnati, OH 45221-0003

Tickets: Adults: $ 15; children (under age 12): $ 10. 

To purchase, please make checks payable to:

ANFE LIGHT OF LIFE

& send to the following address:

Vice Consolato d’Italia in Cleveland

Hanna Building, Suite 618

1422 Euclid Avenue

Cleveland, OH 44115

 

Music and Language

by Michele Alonzo

There are a lot of similarities between learning how to play an instrument and how to speak a foreign language.

I learned how to play guitar by myself when I was a teen ager. At that time I had a lot of passion and willingness to improve, so every day I played more and more my favorite songs and music, sometimes by myself, sometimes with friends.

I developed more skills when one of my best friends, Umberto, decided to buy a guitar for himself and started to play too. We lived in the same building and I was basically his first guitar teacher. We started to play more and more together and in 1983 we enjoyed a wonderful trip together to Munich, Germany, where we basically paid most of our expenses by collecting tips when playing on Marienplatz. In the time frame of a few years, Umberto became a professional classical guitar master, while I dedicated my time to study for very demanding exams in college. So he became my teacher and I learned a lot from him.

 

My friend Umberto

 When I came to the United States, I left my guitar in Italy and, though I promised myself that one day I would play again, I never touched a string for two decades. So when my wife gave me an acoustic guitar as Christmas present last year, I thought it could well be a decorative object of the house, because it would take years for me to play a decent melody again.

I started to try a few simple tunes that I used to play in my 20’s, every day, every night. Amazingly enough, and against any expectation of mine, with a daily practice and some patience, after a few weeks and some sore fingers, I started to reproduce the same melodies I used to play over 20 years ago. After mastering the basic chords I had learned many years ago and working on proper positions, not only could I play the same music, but I could also play some music having more complicated tablatures, that I’d never tried in my life. I was amazed at what I could do and enjoyed my instrument more and more.

This proves that the brain is like a deep drawer where we store a lot of different things in our life, data that we are not even aware we possess anymore. The trick is to find the way to re-extract that knowledge and to keep it on the surface where you have easy access.

So, if practicing a language is like playing an instrument (or any other skill), I have to come to the following conclusions:

1. Learning a language when you are young is definitely an advantage because the brain memorizes the information and stores it in the long term memory. If you exercise on the instrument when you are a young adult, that knowledge will stick with you and you will play the same after many years when you use that same instrument.

2. If you learned the proper way, it is never too late to re-extract that data and use it right, even after two or three decades. It is there, even if you think it is gone. You just need to dig it out.

3. You must be patient when studying because at the beginning you are convinced that you will never be able to remember how to play that sequence of crazy positions on the fret board or how to properly use most of the 15 tenses to conjugate a regular verb.

4. You need to be consistent, because it takes time to reach a level where you don’t feel that people have to plug their ears when you play or speak.

5. Whatever level you are, you can get better. You can play a song better and better if you try each and every day, as you can pronounce and articulate a sentence better and faster if you use it consistently every day.

6. No matter how dedicated you are, there will always be a friend or neighbor who will play or speak better than you, because he or she has a better ear or because he or she has more time to study and practice. So don’t be frustrated, but listen to him or her and learn as much as you can, possibly playing or speaking with that person.

In conclusion, when students ask me what is the best way to learn Italian or to improve the knowledge of the language, I say: start studying now, be patient, be consistent, be confident, take your time, and don’t be disappointed if you don’t become fluent. It is important that even 20 years from now, you will be able to find your way again and to enjoy something you always liked.