Ambassador Hartog Levin opens concert on famous tugboat "Fighter"

September 4, 2009

American conductor Stephen Karr, soprano soloist Hannah Waldman and the Rotterdam Youth Orchestra aboard of “the Fighter” The famous Erasmus bridge is in the background. Photo: Huib Nederhof

Ambassador Levin opened the World Harbor Concert in Rotterdam at the Wilhelmina Pier. This event was part of Rotterdam’s annual “World Port Days.”

The Rotterdam Youth Orchestra gave a classical concert aboard  “The Fighter”, a refurbished tugboat that was a rescue patrol boat in Dutch and Belgian waters from 1977-2008.

The orchestra played music from Gershwin, Prokofiev and Dvorak, supported by two American musicians, conductor Stephen Karr and soprano soloist Hannah Waldman. Both musicians are temporarily working in Rotterdam and are sponsored by the U.S. Embassy under the Cultural Envoy Program. In 2010, Dutch musician Marco Kalkman, will be a Composer-in-Residence at the University of California in Los Angeles.

In her speech, Ambassador Hartog Levin compared Rotterdam with her home town Chicago. She felt at home in Rotterdam because it is so much like Chicago: “Both are windy cities!”