Port, Grafton students to join peers from South Korea on stage

Port Washington and Grafton music students will have the unique experience of performing with their peers from South Korea during a public concert next week.

Fifth-grade choir members from Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Port and singers from Woodview Elementary School in Grafton will join about 45 members of the KARA Youth Chorus and Orchestra from Seoul on stage in the Grafton High School auditorium for a concert at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 3.

The concert is free and tickets are not required.

How the concert came about is a bit of a story, Thomas Jefferson Middle School music teacher Abby Bordak-Raaflaub said,  that began with her counterpart at Port Washington High School.

A former student of Port High Choral Director Dennis Gephart is the coordinator for the travel company that handles arrangements for the South Korean troupe, and since the group is touring in this part of the United States he reached out to Gephart to see if the Port Washington-Saukville School District was interested in collaborating.

Gephart referred him to Bordak-Raaflaub, who loved the idea. But there was a problem.

KARA Youth Chorus and Orchestra would be in the area next week at the same time the Port Washington Parks and Recreation Department’s Port Teen Theater was preparing to stage the “Addams Family” at the Port Washington-Saukville Performing Arts Center at Port High.

“Their set is pretty much all over the stage, so that wasn’t going to work,” Bordak-Raaflaub said.

So Bordak-Raaflaub called her friend Brett Dimmer, the band teacher at John Long Middle School in Grafton, who paved the way for the concert to be held in the Grafton High auditorium.

Bordak-Raaflaub thought it would only be appropriate to include Grafton students in the concert, but upper-level choirs had other obligations. So she contacted a friend, Brittany Ward, whose children attend Lincoln Elementary School in Port with Bordak-Raaflaub’s kids and who happens to be the music teacher at Woodview Elementary School, laying the groundwork for a Port-Grafton-Seoul, South Korea, concert.

“This whole thing was really all about connections,” Bordak-Raaflaub said.

The musical event also has a cultural exchange component. On the day of the concert, the South Korean choir members will spend time with Port Washington students in their classrooms. The following day they will make presentations to social studies classes.

The 45 members of the South Korean group and about 15 chaperones will stay with host families in the Port Washington-Saukville School District, Bordak-Raaflaub said.

Grafton High School is at 1950 Washington Ave.