Musical Welcome for Refugees
Saturday 22nd June 2002
(Article published with kind permission of Northeast Press
Limited,
Sunderland Echo)
A CONCERT for Sunderland's refugees was
held at Roker's Park Hotel entitled "Music Makes Friends" as part of National
Refugee Week.
The concert was put on by Sunderland
Symphony Orchestra which performed music as diverse as the theme tune to Match of the Day,
to Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance.
Musical director, Rupert Hanson, said:
"Since I've been musical director of the Sunderland Symphony Orchestra, we have done
various concerts for the refugees.
"We played a variety of music for
refugees and asylum seekers, and we encouraged participation from them during the concert.
"We had performances by a guitarist
from Portugal, three African dancers and also a classical guitarist from Cyprus.
"The concert was held to make them
feel welcome and it was really well received. There were about 80 in the audience and 20
of us playing.
"The management put on a nice buffet
at the end which meant we could all get together and chat. It was very very good for
international relations.
"There were people there from many
places, like Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, China and one from Brazil. It was a real
international gathering.
"It really went very well and
everybody was so happy at the end and it was great to get together for a couple of
hours."
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