Sister Cities 60th Anniversary Concert

The John J. Cali School of Music, Montclair State University
The University for Music and Performing Arts, Graz, Austria
And
The Montclair State University, Global Education Center
Present

Sister Cities 60th Anniversary Concert
Montclair, New Jersey & Graz, Austria

April 6, 2010, 7:30 pm
Leshowitz Recital Hall
Reception following in Kopps Lounge in Russ Hall

Agathe Kania-Knobloch, Georg Beckmann, Irma Mihelic, Irene Hofmann-Wellenhof, Franz Jochum, and Robert Bartneck

In celebration of the 60-year sister city relationship between Montclair and Graz, supported by Overseas Neighbors community organizations, Montclair State University will sponsor a concert performed jointly by student and faculty from the John J. Cali School of Music, and the University for Music and Performing Arts (KUG) in Graz, Austria.  Montclair and Graz have nurtured this relationship over the past sixty years, including a full scholarship student exchange program funded by both Montclair's Overseas Neighbors and the City of Graz.

The April 6 concert will include choral, vocal, piano and string ensembles performing music by Austrian composers Mozart, Schumann, Brahms, and Berg, and highlighting native Graz composers Wilhelm Kienzel, Anselm Hüttenbrenner, and Americ Goh.  Featured American composers will include Scott Joplin, Lee Hoiby, Morton Lauridsen, Gerald Custer, Joseph Lamb, and Montclair’s own Robert Aldridge, and Thomas Oltarzewski.  The emphasis will be on collaborative performance by artists from both schools. 

Musicians from the University for Music and Performing Arts, Graz include faculty members Georg Beckmann, piano; Agathe Kania, soprano and Franz Jochum, conductor; and their international student vocal quartet comprised of Irma Mihelico (Soprano, Slovenia); Judith Mayer (Mezzo-soprano, Germany); Robert Bartneck (Tenor, Germany) and Herrand Melzer (Baritone, Austria).

Montclair State University faculty members will include Lori McCann, soprano, Stephen Oosting, tenor, and Jeffrey Gall, baritone, and piano faculty members David Witten and Steven Ryan, and Heather J. Buchanan, Director of Choral Activities. They will be joined by Cali School vocal and string students.

Sixty Years of Austria – U.S. Partnership

The City of Graz, Austria, and Montclair, New Jersey have shared an enduring “sister city” partnership since 1949 and have reaped invaluable benefits of cultural and academic exchange. The Sister City bond was formed under the world peace efforts pioneered by former President Dwight D. Eisenhower after WW II. Seeking an alternative to the wars he had witnessed as a soldier, general and Allied Commander, he noted that world peace and international collaboration could not be accomplished by governments alone but by the “understanding and mutual respect between individuals” based on direct contact between ordinary people. In an initiative to support this vision, he created the “People-to-People” program, and the cities of Montclair and Graz were among the first to participate. Later, President Eisenhower called the Montclair Overseas Neighbors program, which sponsors Montclair’s sister city relationship with Graz, the “cornerstone of people-to-people diplomacy.” As the president of Overseas Neighbors, Juliana Belcsak, explains, the outreach with Graz began before the Marshall Plan (1947). Directly after the war, Montclair was sending medical supplies and Care packages to Austria while Mountainside Hospital contributed an urgently needed x-ray machine and an incubator to the bombed-out hospital in Graz. 

The Montclair Overseas Neighbor Program

Today the relationship has resulted in an active exchange of students, prominent business executives, government officials, scientists, engineers and cultural representatives, including individual singers and large orchestras. Many Austrian physicians have interned at Mountainside Hospital. In 2003 when Graz was the European Cultural Capital, artists from “Studio Montclair” were featured in one of the international exhibits and invited to participate in a conference and symposium. In addition, every five years delegations of 35-40 people from Montclair and Graz alternate visits to their partner city.