>La Grande Observer | Union and Wallowa Counties' News Leader

By Jeff Petersen

Observer Staff Writer

If it's 1 p.m. Thursday in La Grande, with 12,000 people hard at work, it must be 7 a.m. Friday in Khabarovsk, the Far East, Russia, and Matt Cooper is among the 700,000 people getting up and meeting the day.

The EOU music professor is staying at the Hotel Voshod, run by the city for guest artists.

Local music teacher Lanetta Paul, meanwhile, is getting up at the apartment of Irina and Slava Sobolevsky. He's probably the most famous pianist in the Far East.

Cooper and Paul returned home from Russia Oct. 2 after two weeks, their second trip to the Russian city in three years in an exchange involving the Oregon Music Teachers Association. Khabarovsk is a sister city of Portland.

Public performances in the newly renovated philharmonic hall highlighted the trip.

Paul played a concert with a string orchestra called "Gloria."

Rehearsals were strenuous. Paul rehearsed six hours a day for the three days preceding the concert and then two hours the day of the concert. Her concert included three concertos. The first was a world premiere of a new work, "Ich Ruf Zu Dir" ("I Call to Thee"), by EOU music professor John McKinnon. The second was the world premiere of "Circle of Life" by New York composer David Rubenstein. The third was "Circle of Life," a Vivaldi concerto for violin, organ and strings.

Cooper, meantime, played a solo jazz concert.

"If Matt hadn't won them over with the first few pieces he played, he did when he was joined by a group of 13 kids, Violino, from Music School No. 7, for a couple of ragtime-style pieces," Paul said. "They announced it as bringing Russia and America together."

Another high point was Cooper's jazz version of a Russian folk song about Khabarovsk. "A carillon plays the song at noon every day in the city," Cooper explained. "It's sort of their city theme song."

The trip was not all performing. It also included visits to the Territorial Museum, which showed how Stalin-era gulags (prisons) once ringed the city.

Cooper and Paul also visited four music schools, several Russian Orthodox church services and an art institute for children.

Cooper enjoyed coaching kids in jazz during school visits and a jam session with students from the college of musical arts.

At a school where both English and yoga are taught, they spoke to two classes. Following their presentation, the students asked questions like, "Do you like George Bush?" "How big are your houses?" and "Is it true that a lot of Americans are fat?"

Both Cooper and Paul were impressed with the new building taking place in the city. Everywhere you go you see people talking on cell phones, enjoying Internet cafes, checking out new stores, hotels and restaurants, even a McDonalds.

On the newly paved streets about three times as many cars cruise as three years earlier.

The city is trying to develop its tourist industry, Paul said, and what seemed grim on their last visit is now being hit with a ray of development sunshine.

Paul and Cooper are seeing to it as Americans that the bridge to Russia is also being built stronger.

Hear the sounds of Russia

If you to sample the music Paul and Cooper performed in Russia, then check out the annual Lanetta Paul and Friends concert Dec. 14.

The concert begins at 3 p.m. at the United Methodist Church.

Paul and Cooper will play a duet on organ, and Paul hopes to repeat the McKinnon and Rubenstein

concertos.