Fund-Drive Falls Short of $140,000: HRO Cancels South America Tour

The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra has cancelled a tour of five South American countries planned for the summer of 1967 because of insufficient funds. The orchestra needed $140,000 to make the trip.

"We just didn't organize in time to raise that amount of money," Edgar G. Engleman '67, president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, said yesterday. A fund-raising committee was formed only last June. It received some pledges, but was not able to contact enough alumni to underwrite the budget in such a short time.

Solicit Funds

The committee also planned to solicit funds from the members and parents of the HRO. But because of the high turnoaer of people in the orchestra this year, the plan provided only negligible revenue.

As a third source of revenue, the orchestra had counted on support from the Federal government. Because of a budget reduction, the State Department could not make the grant this year. Four years ago, the HRO received a federal grant which financed 20 per cent of its 1962 summer trip to Mexico.

No Rescheduling

Three year no immediate plans to reschedule the nine week tour which would have taken the orchestra to Venezuala, Columbia, Peru, Equador, and Chile.

"But the HRO hasn't given up the idea of another cultural exchange tour," Engleman stressed. "We will probably wait a year or two, until our organization is better prepared for such a large undertaking."

The South American tour was planned as a cultural exchange on a 'person-to-person' basis, James D. Yannatos, assistant professor of Music and director of the orchestra, said yesterday.

The HRO had made plans with The Experiment for International Living for its members to stay with local families in the four or five towns visited in each country. "This was going to be a kind of musical peace corps," Yannatos said.

Musical Combination

The musical program would have combined a contemporary American work with a work by a local composer from each country. In addition the group planned to give lectures on the different instruments in an orchestra.