Traveling Music

Transportation has played an important role in Tomoko’s musical journey. Every week Tomoko drives into San Francisco to teach.“I love to drive!” Her love of travel started early; “I remember looking over the Yokohama harbor, and wondering where the ships were going.”

Tomoko took public transportation to get to her early music lessons and high school, and she traveled over an hour from Yokohama to the Tokyo University of the Arts (Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku).

When Tomoko left Japan for the U.S. she saved her money, and flew across the Pacific. Professor Herbert Jan Popper facilitated her immigration by listing her along with a group of Japanese singers for a Japanese opera that was going to be performed for UCLA. She was also able to get exchange student student to help her stay in the U.S.

As a student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, money was tight for Tomoko. She tried for a San Francisco Foundation award that would help finance her studies. Tomoko remembers, “ That morning was rainy, and I had only one dollar, not even enough to take a taxi.” Instead, Tomoko took a bus, holding her umbrella to keep her nice outfit dry. She thought to herself: “I am going to make it.” When she got to the auditorium, a competitor arrived in a Cadillac, and someone held out an umbrella over her head. After Tomoko played the required selection, the judges liked her performance so much that they asked her to play another solo piece. The competition took all day, and Tomoko had to go home alone on the bus at 8pm, when there were few buses at that hour. Two days later she found out that she won.

Tomoko had always wanted to visit Europe because of its long musical tradition. When she graduated from the Conservatory, Tomoko also wanted to compete internationally. Her friends helped pay her flight, and they connected her with other musical supporters. After her competition, “I traveled around Europe -- Rome, Firenze, Nice, Cannes, Munich, Zurich, Sweden -- on a Eurail pass for two months.” Tomoko adds, “I always thought this would be my last trip to Europe.”

Since then, Tomoko has traveled several times to Europe: for other piano competitions, to support her daughter’s skating competitions, and to visit the homeland of her Hungarian husband.

And she still loves to drive around Europe….

The Musical Soul of Europe

Tomoko has always had an eye on European music, which is not surprising. The Germans were particularly prominent in the early 20^th century, several of whom resided in Japan and lectured at the Tokyo School of Music. On their part, some Japanese composers were intrigued by Western art music, and incorporated those tonalities into their pieces.

Europe has always been part of Tomoko's musical soul. Even before staring school, classical European music was part of early family experience as her mother sang hymns, her father played violin, and they listened to classics on the radio.

As part of her schooling Tomoko remembered the importance of children’s songs. In the late 19^th century, the Japanese Ministry of Education reformed  music education by developing a music textbook that included Europe and American hymns and folk songs set to Japanese lyrics. Tomoko and her peers regularly sang these songs, which taught moral behavior and national pride.

During the war, Japan was largely isolated from the Western musical world, but the reputation of European music endured. Tomoko remembered attending a concert of Bohemian pianist Rudolph Serkin the early 1950s; “It was the most gorgeous feeling in the world.” Tomoko yearned to enter that society.

It wasn’t until 1967, though, that she had that opportunity. Her first flight to Europe was made possible through support of friends associated with the Conservatory of San Francisco. Tomoko took a chartered plan from Oakland to Frankfurt, where she performed and networked with musical illuminaries. Later that year she participated in the Long-Thibaud International Piano Competition and Paris, and in the following year she performed at the Queen Elizabeth International Musical Competition in Brussels.

Even after Tomoko curtailed competing internationally, she touristed in Europe, taking advantage of the long legacy of music. She visited Beethoven’s Viennese home, played an antique harpsichord in a Medici house, and perform Chopin’s Raindrops Prelude in Majorca in the museum dedicated to him.

Tomoko’s personal life also incorporated Europe. In Salzburg Tomoko married her husband, Desy Handra, who was an Hungarian medical doctor. And it was in Europe twenty years later that Tomoko helped her daughter navigate the international competitive skating scene.

Europe has served as a cultural gateway to music for Tomoko, which she passes onto her students, some of whom are Europeans themselves.