When in Rome . . .
When junior David Coco received permission to give an organ recital in Rome before embarking on a foreign studies program there last fall, he expected a handful of American friends to turn out. Yet when he sat down to play, more than 200 music lovers had packed the baroque church of Santa Susanna. What they heard in that building designed by a pupil of Michelangelo was a distinctly American program including E. Power Biggs's "Marches and Countermarches of the American Revolution." Coco also played a bit of Bach and Vivaldi. According to Professor Edward Bradley of Dartmouth, who attended, "it was a wonderful night of music."
Coco was one of 15 Dartmouth students in Rome under the guidance of Bradley, a professor of classics, as part of the College's Roman foreign studies program. The students spent three months in Italy, with their base in the ancient capital. Last summer, while he was making plans for the trip, Coco, a resident of Brewer, Maine, learned that a priest in Brewer was a distant relative of the priest of a church in Rome, Santa Susanna. Knowing he would be in Rome come fall, Coco made arrangements through the two priests to play a recital there.
Coco is well qualified to give an organ recital amost anywhere. He has been playing for seven years and is organist at St. Barnabas Church in Norwich, Vt., and at Aquinas House. He has given numerous recitals and was a finalist during his senior year in high school in an "Arts Talent Search" conducted by Educational Testing Service.
In Rome, Coco received the help of an Italian friend in publicizing his recital. He was advised that Roman newspapers carry free notifications of concerts. His concert was included in a long listing of musical offerings for Sunday, November 6. Coco expected an audience of few more than the 21 comprising his Italian friend, 14 Dartmouth students, Professor Bradley and his wife and three children, and the priest. But when Coco took his seat above the nave of the old church to begin his recital with a Bach fantasia, he looked down in amazement at a capacity house of more than 200.
Coco, fellow students, and Professor Bradley and family are long since back in the United States. The story of how a Dartmouth student from Brewer, Maine, "spoke" in the international language of music to some 200 Roman strangers was reported by Professor Bradley on his return.
Comments about the vagaries of "spring" weather in Hanover this year were closerto the truththan usual: On the afternoon and evening of March 13, between two andthree feetof snow were deposited on the Upper Valley the largest single stormsince the 1880s, the collectors of such statistics said. On March 14, shovelers andplowers struggled to clear walks and parking lots. This photograph, taken themorning of March 15, contrasts clear, dry roads a testament to New England sability to cope easily with snow with a still-buried car. But the mounds went asquickly as they came, and just a week later a few gray piles in shady spots were allthat was left.
