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[SBD]

Rice Takes to Stage to Aid Ailing Soprano

By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer1 hour, 17 minutes ago

A musician long before she became an academic and then a world-famous diplomat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took to the Kennedy Center concert stage Saturday to accompany a young soprano battling an often-fatal disease.

Rice's rare and unpublicized appearance at the piano marked a striking departure from her routine as America's No. 1 diplomat. A pianist from the age of 3 she played a half-dozen selections to accompany Charity Sunshine, a 21-year-old singer who was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension a little more than a year ago.

The soprano is a granddaughter of Rep. Tom Lantos (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., and his wife Annette, who Rice has known for years. The Pulmonary Hypertension Association, formed in 1990, presented the concert to draw attention to the disease from which more than 100,000 people are known to suffer.

Largely unknown in the United States until about 10 years ago, it has no known cause or cure, but genetic studies and a search for treatment are under way.

Sunshine has persisted in her career and performed with orchestras in Hungary, her grandparents' home before the Holocaust, Denmark and the United States. On Saturday, in a concert entitled, "An Evening of Music, Friendship and Awareness" and hosted by Lantos, she drew the secretary of state to play selections by Verdi, Mozart and Jerome Kern.

Eileen Cornett, of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Md., accompanied Sunshine on a half-dozen other pieces.

Rice, whose first name is a variation on the Italian musical term "con dolcezza," which is a direction to play with sweetness, learned to read music at the age of 3.

As a child she performed, won piano competitions and planned a career as a a concert pianist. But she switched her field of interest to international relations in her junior year at the University of Colorado and went on to be provost at Stanford University, then President Bush's assistant for national security, and now secretary of state.

Despite her busy schedule, Rice finds time to enjoy classical music and plays occasionally and privately with friends in a string quartet.

In February, on a trip to Europe, she visited a Parisian music school, Conservatoire Hector Berlioz, after a session with French political elite.

Rice tapped her toes to keep time as a music teacher led a group of students age 7 to 9 through their scales. She told the youngsters, "It takes a lot of work to learn to read music. You have to practice and practice and practice."

Among those in the Kennedy Center audience were U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, eight ambasssadors to the United States, Librarian of Congress James Billington, National Institutes of Health director Elias Zerhouni and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith.

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[I B Squidly]

Love that gal!

Like to see a Rice/Gingrich ticket in '08
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"KILL ALL THE LAWYERS!"

-Wlm Shakespeare

[rparrott21]

A class act..hope she runs in 2008...Rice VS Hillibitch..

[LewWaters]

Although not mentioned in the article (that I saw anyway), she is also a very accomplished figure skater.

That Rosie O'Donnell could ridicule this lady as she did on TV recently, shows just who has class and who doesn't. And, Rosie isn't known for class.

If she were to run for POTUS, I think the attacks from the looney left would make their attacks on Bush look like child's play. It all makes me wonder just who is really for encouraging minorities to take their rightful place within our government.
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Clark County Conservative

[Tom Poole]

Presidential material for sure. But Condi may have too much flyover class to suffer the donkey diatribes. And Rosie? Her class is below Pacific trench silt.
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'58 Airedale HMR(L)-261 VMO-2