When I'm not being the face of American Foreign Policy - NOT POL

[Crapshoot]

I'll pay piano at a soprano's concert- and do a good job of it.

Secretary of state takes stage for soprano battling rare disease


WASHINGTON (AP) -- A musician long before she became an academic and then a world-famous diplomat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took to the Kennedy Center concert stage Saturday to accompany a young soprano battling an often-fatal disease.

Rice's rare and unpublicized appearance at the piano marked a striking departure from her routine as America's No. 1 diplomat. A pianist from the age of 3 she played a half-dozen selections to accompany Charity Sunshine, a 21-year-old singer who was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension a little more than a year ago.

The soprano is a granddaughter of Rep. Tom Lantos, D-California, and his wife Annette, who Rice has known for years. The Pulmonary Hypertension Association, formed in 1990, presented the concert to draw attention to the disease from which more than 100,000 people are known to suffer.

Largely unknown in the United States until about 10 years ago, it has no known cause or cure, but genetic studies and a search for treatment are under way.

Sunshine has persisted in her career and performed with orchestras in Hungary, her grandparents' home before the Holocaust, Denmark and the United States. On Saturday, in a concert entitled, "An Evening of Music, Friendship and Awareness" and hosted by Lantos, she drew the secretary of state to play selections by Verdi, Mozart and Jerome Kern.

Eileen Cornett, of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland, accompanied Sunshine on a half-dozen other pieces.

Rice, whose first name is a variation on the Italian musical term "con dolcezza," which is a direction to play with sweetness, learned to read music at the age of 3.

As a child she performed, won piano competitions and planned a career as a a concert pianist. But she switched her field of interest to international relations in her junior year at the University of Colorado and went on to be provost at Stanford University, then President Bush's assistant for national security, and now secretary of state.

Despite her busy schedule, Rice finds time to enjoy classical music and plays occasionally and privately with friends in a string quartet.

In February, on a trip to Europe, she visited a Parisian music school, Conservatoire Hector Berlioz, after a session with French political elite.

Rice tapped her toes to keep time as a music teacher led a group of students age 7 to 9 through their scales. She told the youngsters, "It takes a lot of work to learn to read music. You have to practice and practice and practice."

Kinda cool eh ?

[stevew]

Did anyone catch the Cedric the Entertainer bit at the Whitehouse Press dinner a few weeks back? He did a bit about the 2 faces of Rice, one being the Prim and proper Condi, and the other being the "let it all hang out" Deleeza.

[Farrah Whitworth-Rahn]

What's even more cool is Tom Lantos' life story. He's a survivor of the holocaust. He was rounded up by the Nazi's when he was 16, and forced into a labor camp where he lost his family. He managed to escape and joined the underground resistance. When the war was over he came to the US on an academic scholarship. He's an amazing man.

His life story was featured in the HBO documentary "The Last Days". It was very moving. I highly recommend it for fellow history buffs.