Addie Dunn is only 13 years old, but she understands the power of hard work.
Dunn picked up her violin and busked along the Wasatch Back earlier this year, participated in group performances and sought donations from the local Summit County community for months, all in hopes of fundraising $5,000 to guarantee a spot on Rocky Mountain Strings’ overseas tour in Italy.
And just two weeks before the plane carrying 30 young musicians departed from the Salt Lake City International Airport, Dunn achieved her goal. Her official commitment: embarking on a two-week tour to play classical music with some of her closest friends in some of the most historic cathedrals in the world.
“It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life,” said Dunn, a home-schooled Kamas native. “I feel like it inspired me a lot because being in the U.S. is so different from being in Europe. It made me realize there’s more to the world than the U.S., and it changed my perspective on a lot of things.”
Rocky Mountain Strings is a performing group of around 50 students from different studios in Utah. Debbie Moench, who was Dunn’s first violin teacher when she was only 3 years old, and Ramona Stirling founded the group in 1997. Rocky Mountain Strings has since participated in multiple overseas tours with students, including performances in Germany, Argentina and Poland.
This spring, Rocky Mountain Strings took 30 students and 20 chaperones to Italy, visiting Milan, Rome, Florence, Venice and a handful of small, rural towns. There, the group played a total of 13 performances in only 14 days.
“We played in a lot of churches, some that were Catholic and a lot that were LDS,” Dunn said. “Me and a couple of my friends also went busking in the Vatican. Some of the pieces were a West Side Story compilation, (Scott Joplin’s) ‘Paragon Rag,’ the Bach double, a Vivaldi piece, ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ ‘Méditation,’ ‘O mio babbino caro’ and ‘Intermezzo,’ which are both from operas, and ‘Gabriel’s Oboe.’”
Dunn said she had a very busy schedule, but she was still able to sightsee and visit a number of historical sites on the trip. In fact, she and her friends carried their instruments for the entirety of a castle tour in Rome, which is how they ended up on the streets of the Vatican with their gear for an impromptu performance.
“It was really spontaneous,” she said. “We had our violins with us because we had a performance later, and we were like, ‘Well, why don’t we just do some busking and see how it goes?’ because we had some time. We were a bit nervous because there were some cops around, and we were worried they would make us stop, but we started playing some of our favorite more upbeat pieces. A lot of people started watching.”
The group played a handful of songs and earned a whopping €35, or about $40, but Dunn said it was an incredibly fun and unique experience.
The Italian-built Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints buildings weren’t much different than their American counterparts, according to Dunn. Playing in centuries-old Catholic cathedrals was a different story, however.
“The cathedrals were just 10 times more ornate and beautiful, and the sound resonated so much better,” said Dunn’s mom, Janelle, who accompanied her daughter on the trip. “They sounded better and better with each performance.”
Dunn said her favorite venue of the trip was the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, which was also her favorite city. The cathedral’s construction started on Sept. 8, 1296, and Pope Eugenio IV consecrated it on March 25, 1436 — 140 years later.
The group also visited St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, which Dunn described as “so grand it was almost overwhelming.” Of course, the young musicians also saw the Sistine Chapel, Statue of David, Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Coliseum and the Roman Forum.
“The architecture was crazy to think about because this history is thousands of years old,” Dunn said. “But our history is only a couple of hundred years old, and that changed my perspective completely. Seeing all of these people who had built lives for themselves there also inspired me to work harder at violin and at school. So many famous violinists are from Italy, and sometimes I need that reminder to keep going, that I still need to get better, and my violin has already taken me to Italy, so maybe if I keep working hard, I’ll be able to tour other places later on.”
Dunn doesn’t have any specific travel plans right now, but she said she hopes to visit Switzerland, England, Japan and Australia in the future. For now, though, the Dunn family is just grateful to Rocky Mountain Strings, which will likely host another trip in three years to tour a different country, for giving Addie a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.