Valentina Returns!

After spending the summer in her native Ukraine, Valentina Mustafa recently returned to Bethlehem and I am thrilled that we have resumed rehearsals. We are currently preparing for fall concerts in Bethlehem and Ramallah. One of the reasons I enjoy working with Valentina, besides the fact that she is the hardest working member of the music program and a fantastic soprano, is her cheerful and dramatic personality. Few people could ever rival her sense of spontaneity combined with dedicated and productive work ethic.

Valentina and I are basing our fall concerts on similar but expanded repertoire as last spring, romances from the great Russian composers, refining our musical collaboration and delving deeper into the works of Tchaikowsky and Rachmaninoff. Make no mistake, these guys rarely wrote an easy piece and we have plenty of work to do in our near future. However, bringing to life the poetry and music of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Russia, a rare event in the West Bank, is more than enough reward.