Poem of Praise

The college audiences were more knowledgeable and less wild. Many students came up after the concerts to ask questions and start conversations. And one economics student wrote a poem praising the performance.

The quintet also gave two concerts in the agricultural town of Torreon, one of which was televised. At the end of the tour they spent several more days in Monterrey where they played for their largest audience of the tour. About 2,500 persons heard the quintet play in shirt-sleeves in a park.

During the tour about 8,500 persons attended concerts by the quintet and about 50,000 more heard them on television and radio.

But the tour was valuable not only for the large number of people reached, the quintet feels.

"We made a very personal sort of contact," Glenn Sproul said. "Especially with people our own age we had a direct personal relation."

Closer Contact

There were no civic receptions and none of the high-level contact that marked the tour of the 70-member HRO a year ago. Instead, Sproul said, "It was easy for the audience to surround us and meet us. It was easy for us to adjust to different conditions. It was impossible for us to be an American colony."

Sproul said, "It makes more sense for the U.S. to send groups like us abroad and do it frequently than to make a huge production of sending highly trained artists."

Only one member of the quintet, Pamela Campbell, concentrated in music. And Sproul thinks that the fact the quintet were not professionals was an advantage because "we did not act too highly trained--we were not aloof."

"All of us were lifted up and carried away by enthusiasm," said Sproul, "just like the audiences."