Arn Chorn-Pond, a musician and human rights activist from Cambodia, will visit Lebanon Valley College Wednesday, March 23 as part of the 2015–2016 Colloquium Series. Chorn-Pond’s 6 p.m. keynote talk will be followed by a performance of Dr. Chinary Ung’s music. Both events will be held in Lutz Hall of Bertha Brossman Blair Music Center and are free and open to the public.
Chorn-Pond is the subject of a book and a documentary based around events in his life. As a young boy born in Cambodia in the 1960s, Chorn-Pond survived the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime. The Communist Party of Kampuchea controlled Cambodia from 1975 to about 1979, and set up policies and procedures that would account for the deaths of an estimated two million people.
Never Fall Down is a 2012 novel based on Chorn-Pond’s transition from a child of war to a man of peace. Written by Patricia McCormick, the work was nominated for a National Book Award. Chorn-Pond is also the inspiration for the 2003 Emmy-nominated documentary “The Flute Player.” His ability to play the flute is what kept him alive as a boy, playing propaganda songs for his captors. His story is one of survival, endurance, and the raw power of music.
After escaping Cambodia, Chron-Pond was adopted and educated in the United States, attending Brown University and graduating from Providence College. He began a series of community rebuilding projects and founded several organizations, including Children of War, Cambodian Volunteers for Community Development and Peace Makers, a U.S.-based gang-intervention project for Southeast Asian youth. In the mid-1990’s, he returned to Cambodia on a mission to rebuild his family’s artistic legacy and to find his music teacher from the time of the Khmer Rouge. On his trip, he “discovered” that other Master artists who had miraculously survived the war and the resulting genocide, were surviving in extremely difficult living conditions. In 1998, with a group of dedicated people in the United States, he created The Cambodian Masters Performers Program, which grew into Cambodian Living Arts, an independent nonprofit organization.
Chorn-Pond has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Reebok Human Rights Award, the Anne Frank Memorial Award, and the Kohl Foundation International Peace Prize.
To complete the evening, LVC music faculty members and area musicians will offer a musical response to Chorn-Pond’s presentation in the form of three musical pieces composed by Cambodian-born Dr. Ung, who also lost family members to the Khmer Rouge regime. Dr. Ung, currently a professor of composition at the University of California at San Diego, continues to work with Cambodian culture and history groups worldwide. He trained at the Manhattan School of Music and later received his doctorate from Columbia University. Dr. Ung is the recipient of numerous awards, including three Cultural Preservation Awards from various Cambodian communities. He was the first American composer to win the international Grawemeyer Award and has won honors from the National Endowment for the Arts and American Academy of Arts and Letters.
The performance pieces include:
Spiral VI—performed by LVC faculty, including Beverly Butts ’78 (clarinet) and Ai-Lin Hsieh (cello), along with Simon Maurer (violin) and Dennis Loftin (piano). Dr. Matthew Erpelding, director of choral activities and assistant professor of music, will direct the group.
Cinnabar Heart—performed by Mika Godbole (percussion).
Spiral—performed by Dr. Eric Fung (piano), associate professor of music, Hsieh (cello), and Godbole (percussion).