Sunday, May 15th

   On Sunday, 15th of May the Kobe Club was the venue for a very special Classical Music Concert in support of the relief efforts for The Great Eastern Earthquake and Tsunami that had occurred 2 months prior.
   The background on how the concert was organized is interesting. The General Committee, collectively had the idea of putting on a Classical Musical Concert to raise money to help the relief efforts of the Japan Red Cross and I volunteered to ask my brother and sister-in-law to perform at such a concert. My brother-in-law, Masato Hori and his wife Yuka Ganse are both graduates of the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo, the same school as Seiji Ozawa. Masato and Yuka are a classically trained pianist and flutist.
   Dr.Akifumi Yamanaka had also independently been thinking of creating a Classical Concert in support of the disaster. As it turned out, Dr Yamanaka`s sister-in law Kiyoko Nakata, a classically trained Violinist and also a graduate of Toho Gakuen was currently the Conductor of a Classic String Ensemble called Vega Junior Ensemble which consisted of 20 young musicians from Age 10 to 20. He suggested that he would ask his sister-in-law to invite V.J.E to perform at the planned concert, and of course we jumped at the opportunity! We did not find out until later but both of our relatives were class mates who had known each other for years!