Once-in-a-Lifetime Tour

Robert Desotelle with Alex Sabo, director of the Wisconsin Music Ambassadors, during the 2014 European tour. Submitted photo.

It’s been a summer Robert Desotelle of Sturgeon Bay will never forget. He graduated from high school in June, left a few days later on a 16-day tour of Europe with the Wisconsin Ambassadors of Music and reported in mid-August for soccer practice at Lawrence University in Appleton, where he has a scholarship to study music.

Robert began piano lessons at five and took up percussion at 11, the same year he and two other sixth graders, Sean Senito and Reid Stephenson, formed the band, How ‘Bout No. Their first performance was on a float in a parade at Sevastopol, playing a Blink-182 cover and the Scooby Doo theme song. They played for their eighth-grade dance, and the group has continued to perform throughout high school.

In recent years, Robert has specialized in the marimba. His solos won firsts in state competition in his sophomore and junior years and an exemplary first this year. No Sturgeon Bay High School student has earned that honor in more than a decade. Robert was nominated for the Ambassadors by his band teacher Heidi Hintz, and then auditioned for his position within the percussion section.

The 150 band members and 120 choir members first came together for a few days of rehearsal at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, ending with a send-off concert for their families, and flew to London in June. They were accompanied by about 50 adults – high school band and choir directors who served as section leaders and chaperons and a number of parents, including Robert’s folks, Bob and LuAnn Desotelle.

Once in Europe, the group traveled by bus. “Very comfortable, European buses,” Robert says. That’s fortunate, as there were long days on the bus – once a trip of 12 or 13 hours. Their first concert was in London, and after sightseeing there, they took a ferry to France, where they performed in Paris.

On a free morning, Robert and his roommates hoped to climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower. The line was very long, and when they got in, they were disappointed to find they were required to ascend part of the way via elevator. “But we did reach the very top,” he says, “and the view was incredible. We could see Notre Dame, Sacré-Cœur, the Seine – all of Paris. We were among the very few members of the group who were able to get all the way to the top, back down and back to where we were supposed to be on time.”

The Ambassadors’ next stop was in Seefeld, Austria, a small town about 11 miles from the Olympic site of Innsbruck. The concert there was rained out – the only cancelled performance in the outside venues in which they were scheduled. They traveled on to Crans-Montana, a ski resort in the heart of the Swiss Alps, high above the Rhone Valley.

With a free morning available, Robert and his roommates rode a lift as far as possible up a nearby 1,500-meter peak, then made a “straight-up climb” to the top. “The air got very thin,” he says, “and it was hard to breathe, but it was so beautiful. We could see for miles, all the way to the other side of the Alps.”

Other stops in Switzerland were in Zermatt and Montreux, where the annual jazz fest that is more than 40 years old and one of the world’s largest, was in full swing. The Ambassadors performed in Rothenberg, Germany, and had lunch one day in tiny Liechtenstein, the sixth smallest country in the world and the only country contained entirely within the Alps.

The last stop on the 16-day tour was Venice, listed in its entirety as a World Heritage Site. It was also Robert’s favorite city and the one to which he’d most like to return. Saint Mark’s Basilica, rebuilt in 978 after the original was burned in a rebellion, was a highlight there, but he loved it all – the people, the language, the culture. “It is so beautiful,” he says, “and there’s so much history.

“I met astounding musicians on the tour and realized that in many ways it really is a small world. We came home with lots of pictures, but even more memories. It was just an incredible experience that it’s going to take a long time to absorb. I still can’t believe it all happened.”

Wisconsin Ambassadors of Music has taken thousands of students on the every-other-year tours since 1996. Its director is Alex Sabo, the retired band director from the Kenosha School District.