Background story by Lily Klebanoff Blake’64

One of the reasons I will be in LA then is to attend a performance of Shanghai Sonatas at the Annenberg Center.  Shanghai Sonatas is a musical in development about the role Jewish Refugees in Shanghai played in the development of  a strong classical music tradition in China.  (By way of background, about 20,000 Jews were able to escape Nazi persecution and take refuge in Shanghai.  I am the third generation of my family to live in China, so we were not refugees. There are many Chinese classical musicians.)  The musical is being developed by Sean (Xiang) Gao, a professor at the University of Delaware.  When Barbara Dallinger Crowell, who lives in Delaware, learned about this, she invited me to Delaware to see a performance and introduced me to Sean.  Long story short,  Sean learned about my family’s history in China and that my maternal grandfather had opened probably the first classical music store in China in 1903 in Harbin.  Sean refurbished my grandfather’s violin and played it as an encore at a performance in Delaware.  It was a totally remarkable experience, and I was fortunate to share that with Barbara and Hope Justman.  Sean plans to play my grandfather’s violin as an encore after a performance of Shanghai Sonatas at the Annenberg.  See the link below for more information about Shanghai Sonatas, as well as a short video of Sean playing my grandfather’s violin in Delaware

https://www.thewallis.org/shanghai?short=shanghai

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk8sohN2gQ

---