Bach Festival choir avoids a sour note

By Bob Welch 
Columnist, The Register-Guard

As executive director of the Oregon Bach Festival, Royce Saltzman has done his share of backstage maneuvering to help get visas for foreign choirs singing at the annual Eugene event.

He's made eleventh-hour calls to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, pleaded with U.S. representatives in Korea, and flown to Cuba in an attempt to keep the international spirit of the festival alive.

But nothing can top what Saltzman - with much help from a guy across the street and a U.S. congressman - did to help clear 45 singers of the Schola Cantorum choir of Venezuela, who will perform in the June 23 to July 10 festival.

This time, he wasn't up against the usual Immigration and Naturalization Service. This time he was up against Homeland Security.

It's May 18. Visa requests have been in since February, but there's been no clearance. In two days, the deadline to secure $30,000 worth of airline tickets will expire. More than $150,000 in grants will be for naught. Six Eugene churches expecting the choir to sing at June 19 events will be jilted. And the choir's June 23, 24 and 27 festival performances - advertised in 40,000 brochures sent nationwide - will be kaput.

Saltzman, 76, has tried seemingly everything, including working with Rep. Peter DeFazio's office. No visas. Saltzman is a nervous wreck.

"The seriousness of the situation is almost immeasurable," he says. "The reputation of the Bach Festival is resting on this."

Then, in a Eugenean twist, hope arrives in the form of a neighbor whom Royce knows more as a guy walking his dog than a potential catalyst to reason with a Homeland Security Department bent on ending international terrorism.

Andy Moore, vice president of a festival sponsor, Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. in Eugene, is the son of longtime festival board member Pete Moore. And, having spent five years in Washington, D.C., as an aide to former Congressman Bob Smith, he has some good contacts. Among them: Brian MacDonald, chief of staff for Rep. Greg Walden, whose 2nd District encompasses Central and Eastern Oregon.

Walden graduated from the University of Oregon, and the festival is a donor-funded organization of the university. He knows UO President Dave Frohnmayer. And better yet, given the politics du jour, Walden's a Republican who serves with Rep. Christopher Cox, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.

Moore starts making calls. Walden vows to do what he can. But he quickly gets rebuffed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (the turbocharged replacement of the INS), which won't give him even the phone number for a key contact.

He turns to Cox. On the House floor this day, Congress is debating a $34.2 billion reauthorization measure for Homeland Security, which has taken plenty of hits for straining gnats and swallowing camels.

At this point, the government doesn't need another Cat Stevens case. "The issue," Moore says, "got elevated to a high level within 24 hours. We had a fortunate set of circumstances, given the timing. We got to the right people."

The day before the deadline, not only is clearance given so the airline tickets can be purchased but, within five days, the director of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, has worked with Walden's office to clear the backlogged visas.

"It would have been the classic case of bureaucracy not seeing the forest for the trees," Moore says. "Nobody wanted to do anything unfair or that would jeopardize national security, but these people were a known entity" - they toured the United States just three years ago - "and had been in the (visa) pipeline three to four months."

"The power of music," Saltzman says, "is that it is able to build bridges across different cultures, politics, religions and languages."

Against such obstacles, it's ironic that Homeland Security almost became a bridge too far.