The Hawk

Issue date: 4/16/08 Section: Features

Oyabu impresses students and faculty alike with her piano skills.

The quick notes of a rhythmic tune reach the back of a small room in Boland Hall, where a man enters and can't help but do a little dance. Behind a piano, the tiny fingers of a young-looking woman in traditional Japanese clothing jump from one key to another.

Hitomi Oyabu's quiet face doesn't have that look people get when they know they're being watched; she's too into the music. Her eyes never leave the piano. The piece changes pace, first quick and sharp, then slow and dramatic.

Oyabu, 21, has been studying at Saint Joseph's University for the last two semesters. She comes from Sophia University, a Jesuit college in Japan, where she studied English and Education. Though she's played the piano since she was four, it was at Saint Joseph's that she wrote her first compositions when she opted to take music classes that her home school doesn't offer.

The composition is the piano part to a trio in variation form that which Oyabu herself wrote. Next month, Hitomi will perform the piece with members of the Philadelphia Opera Orchestra.

"Hitomi's music is well-crafted, dramatic, and also narrative. She's telling a story in sound with her music," said Suzanne Sorkin, Ph.D., who has taught Oyabu in three music classes, including Music Composition I.

Quiet, unassuming, and congenial, Oyabu first wanted to study in America to master the English language, something she found people expected her to have picked up after living with her family for a short time in Boston.

Her family has bounced around for half of her life, spending time in Boston, Tokyo, and other places in Japan.

"It's not easy to tell where I am from," she said, though she cites Tokyo as her hometown out of convenience.

Seven years ago, during a family visit to Philadelphia, Oyabu said the old buildings and history attracted her to the city.

The buildings at Sophia University in Japan are plain, she explains. Here, the stone buildings give the campus a magical feel and the size of a school with green lawns is impressive to Obayu and her friends from home.

When she sends them pictures of the St. Joe's campus, they are especially amazed with Barbelin.

"Some of my friends said it was like a building from a Harry Potter movie," she said.

Continued...

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