Wu Love’s Winning Attitude
For guitarist Wu Love (14), it’s all about keeping a healthy perspective. As the 1st prize winner of the 2010 Sierra Nevada Classical Guitar Youth Competition, she was invited to play a recital for the Sacramento Guitar Society in March, which she called, “an amazing performing experience. People there are really nice,” she adds. Still, she thinks of competitions as a necessary evil. “I’ve done quite a few competitions. It’s really necessary to get experience doing them,” says Love. “When I first started I freaked out and failed, but now I have the right attitude. It’s hard to judge musicians because it is so subjective and there are a lot of variables. Now I see competitions as another opportunity to share my interpretation with lots of people, like a recital.”
Love’s start on the guitar was rather serendipitous. A relative, who happened to have an instrument, gave it to her as a sixth birthday present. “I had been thinking of trying a musical instrument and since I had a guitar I ran with it and never looked back,” she says. Her schoolwork at Stanford EPGY Online High School, an online Education Program for Gifted Youth, keeps her very busy, but she finds the time to practice two to three hours per day. On Saturdays, Love studies with Scott Cmiel at the SFCM Preparatory Division. She likes taking music theory classes there, which she claims help her understand her music better.
What’s next for Love? “I’m really happy that my parents gave me the opportunity to study music,” she says. “I’m interested in science, technology and math too. I’d like to go into science and also play the guitar at a professional level, but I don’t think about my future that often.”
Herzberg’s Musical Calling
When Elizabeth Herzberg sings in the chorus of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s production of Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, she brings a special insider’s view. Herzberg has a valued friendship with the nuns of the Carmelite Monastery in San Rafael, developed since the fifth grade when she visited to view touring relics of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. As she was growing up and through high school, she’s helped them in the garden or in the kitchen or with correspondence, even singing with them in their chapel. For Herzberg, Poulenc’s opera has captured their spirit perfectly: “It’s a really moving opera. The nuns are martyrs who gave their lives to end the French Revolution. The Prioress of the Monastery told me that 10 days after their death, the Revolution ended. It’s an incredible work. It’s so human, and you see it in all of Poulenc’s nuns; their struggles with death and with fear.”
Much of coloratura soprano Elizabeth Herzberg’s musical inspiration has come from the Catholic Church, beginning with her imitating a recording of the Ave Maria at age 10. Her natural, angelic voice led her mother to seek out guidance from Jane Randolph, renowned voice teacher to luminaries like Frederica von Stade. Herzberg also received a Catholic school education in Marin, and sang Mozart arias with the Marin Youth Symphony when she was 13. Herzberg is graduating this spring and will spend time working on her voice with Randolph, and auditioning. She says, “I’d love to make it in this profession. Opera singing is what I love the best.”
Dialogues of the Carmelites March 31-April 3 at Cowell Theatre, Fort Mason Center.
OTHS Goes Down to the Nightclub
Ever heard about Oakland Technical High School’s performing arts program? Until recently, it didn’t exist, chopped from the curriculum seven years ago when the budget ax fell. When parents heard that even the one remaining program, Opera Piccola, which brought limited arts participation to this diverse public school, was to be cut, the buck stopped there. “The parents just got fed up and started meeting with the principal about the importance of bringing back arts to the school community,” says Pat Williams, co-chair of the committee to restore the auditorium. “The principal was supportive, and it took everyone working together to get started down that path.” Since then, the class of 1961 raised $24,000 to restore their Steinway grand piano, and Williams’ committee is still working to refurbish the crumbling auditorium, piece by piece. “We’re in our second phase right now, raising money to repair the rigging, upgrade the lighting and acoustics, and eventually chairs. It’s all 50 years old,” she says.
And of course running the program, which now has full-time dance, music, and drama teachers, takes funds as well. To these ends, Jazz Band director David Byrd and his counterpart at Westlake Middle School, Randy Porter, have organized a benefit concert at Oakland’s famous venue, Yoshi’s Jazz Club and Restaurant, on April 11, at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. The kids are thrilled to be performing where so many jazz greats have played, and the school hopes to gain widespread audience to bring in some needed cash. Come down to hear these junior jazzers!
To find out how you can help the school’s auditorium project, please send an email to [email protected]