Mount Royal Academy - Violin Class Concert, produced by Simeon Morrow, June 2, 2016
Mount Royal Academy - Violin Class Concert, produced by Simeon Morrow, June 2, 2016
What I Did Not Find in the US: Family and Career: Simeon Morrow's Testimony
Ten years have passed since he left the United States to see the world in pursuit of his dream: music. "I've worked as a conductor in Vienna, Amsterdam, and Milan—says Simeon Morrow—, trying to learn, improve, form and perfect myself. One day my spiritual father, an Italian priest, advised me to return to the United States. I do not know why he said that; maybe he thought that this bohemian phase of my life was somehow about to end. What is certain is that my family was going through a hard time and needed, then more than ever, my constant living, physical presence. So, I left for New Hampshire, to go home, but without a job, away from city life, in the woods, among trees and pensioners. That world wasn't unfamiliar to me, but I would certainly have to rediscover it; and, in any case, when I returned it seemed that there was no longer room for me, that I had left everything, and I found myself rebuilding my life brick by brick."
After a few months, Simeon became reacquainted with a friend from El Salvador: "He said to me—he recalls—that he worked as a teacher in a choir composed of young people 'at risk' because they were living in difficult areas, controlled by bands in perpetual rivalry, without families to back them nor a horizon before their eyes." This orchestra, called "Don Bosco," was located in San Salvador: "I did not think twice; I offered to go there to direct a Mass in C major, Beethoven's Op. 86." The trip from the border of Texas to El Salvador takes three hours by plane: "but the effort that I was asked to make just after coming to my destination was much more important. After years of a career and loneliness abroad, I had to fully be a man. I heard these adolescents say to me: "Master, teach!" asking if they could come at 8 o’clock and get one more hour of instruction from me. I made use of all the wisdom and professional knowledge that I had acquired through hard work around the world. The reward was not long in coming: after the concert, I met the families (or what remains) of these young people; and, for a moment, my life was not flowing along two parallel tracks between career and family, but in perfect harmony and unimaginably, like a river that bathes and fertilizes the earth. Music—my work—has made it possible to unite men and women, who were dispersed, in the great embrace of one family."