Travel writer and TV personality Rick Steves may be best known for his PBS series, Rick Steves’ Europe. Now, he’s combining music and travel with Rick Steves’ Europe: A Symphonic Journey.
Steves will perform with the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra on March 29 at the Center for the Arts at George Mason University. We spoke with him about his performance and why he feels it’s important to learn more about the world and humanity as a whole.
What inspired your performance with the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra?
The only work I’ve ever had has been music or travel. I was a piano teacher, and my dad imported pianos and was a piano tuner. He started importing pianos from Europe, so we went together to piano factories in Germany and Austria. I got over there and realized that Europe was an exciting place to travel. Music has always been a big part of my life. I paid for my trips to Europe with my money I got from teaching piano.
My goal in travel teaching, with my tours, guidebooks, and TV shows, is to inspire people to venture beyond Orlando. Part of that is appreciating the Romantic era of the 1800’s, which was a time of romanticism and nationalism, when different countries from all over Europe were asserting themselves. And nations were being carved out, small ethnic groups were breaking away from colonial overlords, and music served as a bugle call on the battlefield for these national struggles. With music, we can go back to the 1800s and cheer on these stirring causes.
I get to weave these stirring stories of patriotism and national struggles together. And illustrate with the music we play how it was a bugle call on the battlefield. The whole concert is from the Romantic era. We play “America the Beautiful” and start in the U.S., then take that ethnocentric musical emotion on the road. We’re going to seven different countries and hear music that does the same thing emotionally to people from those countries, understanding the context of the music and what it means locally.
Do you have any favorite spots to explore in Northern Virginia?
There are always new places to explore, but I am just so focused on Europe. We need to understand that America is a beautiful place, but it’s 4% of humanity, and there’s 96% out there. If we could just travel and get to know the family, the world can be a better place. I firmly believe and love this idea that we can learn a lot about our homes by leaving them and looking at it from a distance.
Was there ever a destination you were fearful to travel to?
I think the main thing is, when I’m afraid of a place, it’s because I don’t know it. And when I go there, I become less afraid of it. The most important book I’ve written is called Travel As a Political Act. And half that book was written from experiences that I had getting to know people in places that are supposed to be our enemies — in Cuba, Nicaragua, Palestine, Iran, and Russia. When it comes right down to it, we’re all just people, and we’re trying to figure it out.
Feature image courtesy Rick Steves’ Europe
