Bravo! Vancouver singers, Croatian symphony to join forces

The Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra will perform on Sept. 30 at St. Joseph Church in Vancouver.

He knew they understood English. But Michael Kissinger wasn’t sure how much after he finished his impassioned promoter’s spiel in front of the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra in preparation for the group’s first tour of the Pacific Northwest.

The professional musicians quietly listened to his lofty descriptions about the trip but just looked back at him with blank faces.

Kissinger learned at dinner later that night, from general director Pero Sisa, that the Croatian orchestra had taken its first American tour in its 100-year history a few months earlier, in November 2007. It had not been an experience any of them wanted to repeat. Sisa said they didn’t have a local coordinator on site, didn’t have full audiences in the theaters and were booked in remote hotels infested with insects, making for long bus rides between performances from Baltimore to New York.

“I told Pero that I wish someone would have translated that speech for me,” Kissinger said. “He laughed and responded that they understood me exactly. Though they might have been thinking, ‘Here’s another American who’s going to scam us.’ … Now, I’m really on a mission. These are our colleagues, our friends, and I want to show them a good time and treat them with respect.”

As part of this cultural collaboration, Bravo! Vancouver’s 50-member chorale, led by Kissinger and co-director Maria Manzo, will join the 30 Croatians in a weeklong series of concerts, starting with a private performance at the International Rotary Convention Saturday in Portland, followed by public shows in Portland’s Dolores Winningstad Theatre on Sept. 27 and Vancouver’s St. Joseph Catholic Church, Bravo! Vancouver’s home venue, on Sept. 30. The group also will perform in Olympia, Seattle and Edmonds. The program will include Croatian tunes, such as “The Eternal City of St. Blaise” written by Sisa, as well as American folk songs.

Kissinger discovered Dubrovnik and its orchestra when he and his wife, Manzo, who is also music director of Bravo! Vancouver, went to the eastern European country a few years ago as part of a religious pilgrimage.

Manzo’s grandmother was born in Croatia, and Manzo had been back several times to visit family members. But Kissinger was making his first trip in 2003, and he wanted to explore the rest of the country, too.

That included a stop in Dubrovnik, a tourist town on the Adriatic Sea, where he was stunned by the quality of the city’s orchestra. He compares the skill of the players to that of the St. Paul (Minn.) Chamber Orchestra, the nation’s only full-time professional chamber orchestra which is widely regarded as one of the finest in the world. Kissinger and Manzo have returned just about every year since, working on this tour but also playing concerts with the group.

“When I’m there, talking with these people, I see their passion and enthusiasm and love for democracy, entrepreneurialism, the arts, intellectual stimulation, the ability to create, all of the things that flow from freedom,” Kissinger said. “They cannot embrace democracy and capitalism fast enough. It’s like they’ve come into the Mall of America with a pocket full of cash. Now that the cork of that champagne bottle has burst open, you can’t contain it.”

Bravo is contributing about $50,000 of the costs of this tour, while the city of Dubrovnik is picking up about $100,000 of the tab, including airfare, salaries and the per diem for the performers and support staff.

Kissinger said the Croatian government considers this kind of outreach an important way to spread the word about the country and its attractive amenities. Dubrovnik, reportedly the model for Italy’s Venice, spends 15 percent of its city budget on arts and culture.

“They know this is good business,” Kissinger said. “This is something that they believe in, part of their culture. But it’s also smart economics.”

When cruise ships are passing by Dubrovnik, the thinking goes, the Croatians will want those vessels to stop.

They hope the tourists will explore and spend money and tell their friends about what a great place it is, inspiring even more tourist traffic.

Kissinger hopes those sorts of positive feelings about the Northwest will be planted, too. Between performances, the Croatians will stay in Homewood Suites by Hilton on the Columbia River and be taken to a variety of local attractions, such as the Vancouver National Historic Reserve, the Columbia Gorge and Pioneer Courthouse Square.

“If we break even on this,” Kissinger said, “I’d be ecstatic. Our goal simply is to have good audiences, play good music and cover the costs.”

The collaboration also is part of the groundwork for a replica of the Vancouver Wine and Jazz Festival that Kissinger and Manzo want to produce in Dubrovnik, starting in 2010 or so.

Bravo has been an ambitious collaborator since 2003, when the group joined Tears of Joy Theatre to present Igor Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale.” The concert series since has formed partnerships with such organizations as the Portland Opera, the Washington State Ballet and The New Washingtonians from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C. But this is the first time Bravo has worked internationally on such a scale.

“Part of what you do in these situations is not just the music,” Kissinger said. “It’s also a sharing of culture and friendship. We want to show them what our country is all about. When they leave, we want them to be saying, ‘what a great musical experience’ and, ‘what a beautiful country.’ ”