The Adventure Begins

This evening I'm meeting up at San Francisco Airport with about 75 musicians of the Cincinnati Pops, along with Pops maestro Erich Kunzel and several members of symphony management, for the Pops' first-ever tour to China. Although we all are veterans of many international tours, this one is bound to be grueling. For most of the musicians, today's travel plans began at 6 p.m. in Cincinnati on Monday, and will end around 3 p.m. on Wednesday in Beijing!

A few left earlier. On my plane to SF on Sunday, I was sitting with stage manager Tom Thoman, who was flying to Seoul, S. Korea, and on to Beijing, where he was meeting the 22,000 pounds of instruments and equipment being shipped separately via cargo plane.

Other musicians in the party of 117 left earlier so that they could begin a hike on a secluded part of the Great Wall.

Travel with me as the Cincinnati Pops becomes the first American pops orchestra to tour the mainland, with two historic performances in the Great Hall of the People this weekend, tours to the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, banquets and much more.

We'll also travel to Shanghai, where the orchestra performs in a theater seating 8,000 and lastly to the island country of Singapore.

P.S. Cincinnati is being represented in China another way this week. I just received an e-mail from Steve Kleykamp of Mason, whose son Benjamin is traveling in China, Taiwan and Singapore with the famed Vienna Boys Choir. They just finished two concerts in Beijing at the 21st Century Theater, with visits to the Great Wall at Badaling (same section as the one President Nixon visted in 1972), he writes. Benjamin's choir will travel to singapore on Nov. 1 to perform at the Esplanade (same place the Pops will be performing).

The world gets smaller every day!