Director of Choral Studies, Plymouth State University

Katterwall: What is your musical background?
Dr. Perkins: Bachelor’s degree in piano performance from Brigham Young. Master and Doctoral degrees in conducting from the University of Southern California. Fulbright Scholar in Helsinki.

K: What is your funniest conducting memory?
Dr. P: Conducting at a senior centre in Maine, USA and being um, groped from behind by a one-legged octogenarian in a wheel chair.

K: What is a particularly memorable teaching/conducting experience?
Dr. P: Visiting an inner-city school in New Jersey and giving the 1st graders an opportunity to conduct and feel the power of unifying an ensemble!

K: Where are some of the most exciting places you've travelled and why were you there?
Dr. P: Vietnam, as principal guest conductor of the Vietnam National Opera and Ballet in Hanoi.

K: Tell us about your history with the piece Betelehemu.
Dr. P: My good friend and colleague Barrington Brooks was a graduate student at USC with me. He taught us this piece by rote, in the African tradition. I have performed and taught this piece all over the world for the last 23 years! Barrington died of HIV AIDS in the early 90s.

K: What's your next big project?
Dr. P: I am conducting Traviata, Fledermaus, and Porgy and Bess at the Opera House in Hanoi in August. I have just been hired as the music director of the Hanover Chamber Orchestra and we will have our first concerts together in September.

If you'd like to join Dr. Perkins choral workshop on 16^th August – please drop us a line in the office.

If you were out-and-about in Central, TST, Causeway Bay or ELEMENTS Mall this summer, you may have seen a collection (a Soho Collection, if you will...) of 4 ladies ‘Flirting With Sound’.
As part of the mall's summer campaign, ‘Flirting With Sound’, the ladies have wailed, whistled, shimmied and shook in an effort to bring sound to life on the streets of Hong Kong. All of this led to an interactive performance at the mall with their Mezza di Voce machine in late July. The machine takes your voice and body movements and transfers it into images, bubbles, sea creatures, colour patterns, squiggly lines – you name it – and projects them onto a screen. Soho Collective gave 8 performances with the machine at the end of July.

If you missed us on the streets or in the mall, you can catch us as the warm-up act for MiG (from 'We Will Rock You') in various locations throughout TST, Causeway Bay and Central on Friday, 8th August or in the mall on Saturday, 9th August. You can also catch the reprise of our July performances on 16^th & 17^thAugust at the mall.

August
6^th - 27^th : Summer Fling 2008 Rehearsals

16^th : Dr. Dan Perkins Choral Workshop
Enrollment through Katterwall

25^th : Normal Teaching Resumes

28^th : Hullaballoo Resumes
Enrol with camille@katterwall.com

30^th : Summer Fling @ The Helena May, 8pm
Tickets from Katterwall Office. Raffle in aid of Liangshan Leprosy Project

September
10^th : Summer Fling 2008 with Kassia Women & Men @ HK Fringe Club
Tickets from HK Ticketing, Tel: 31 288 288, www.hkticketing.com

October
Week beginning 6th: Kassia Men & Women start rehearsals for
‘A Christmas Carol’