Raising Your Consciousness with Music

I made friends with one of the performers who was booked for the past two legs of the cruise I am on -- internationally acclaimed flutist Bettine Clemen. She has played with many international orchestras including the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg. Being an amateur flutist myself I was dazzled at her command of technique (she has a gold flute and the tone is amazing - rich and warm) and also her amazing stamina -- twice doing two shows in one day of solo and accompanied flute. I'm always exhausted after a serious hour of practice.

But even more interesting were her stories she told. She has been all over the world to raise awareness of animal rights. Part of her multimedia show has film of her playing music for animals and their fascination with the music she plays. They seem mesmerized. One sequence has an exotic parrot keeping time with his head bobbing and another has an australian wallaby gazing at her with fascination finally reaching out with one of its hands to caress her flute. But the segment that caught my attention was her playing for Jonathan, a two hundred and twenty year old tortoise on St. Helena. This tortoise was alive and wandering about the island when Napoleon was imprisoned there! Now if Jonathan could just find a ghost writer to take down his memoirs…

Bettine, when she was just a child, had a chance to play with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra just before the start of the Cultural Revolution. She befriended and learned from the principal flutist who was an extremely accomplished musician. Sadly, in the purge of all things western he was taken to a reeducation camp where they broke his wrist and jaw to make sure he would never play again. Bettine was able to track him down this trip to Shanghai and while he cannot play the flute he is a respected member of the Shanghai music community and appreciated for his vast musical knowledge. It was a joy to her to finally renew their friendship.

I constructed the montage of Bettine from photos I took during her classical program that she preformed just before docking at Hong Kong.