Music. Languages. Photography. Three of senior John Tneoh’s passions.
Tneoh is a vocal performance major who spends most of his free time taking pictures and then locking himself in the Mac lab to edit them.
“It’s my stress reliever after hours and hours of rehearsing stacked on top of school work,” Tneoh said.
He also speaks four different languages fluently — Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay and English — while learning three others — German, Italian and French.
This past summer, Tneoh went to Italy with a group of Ouachita students. He was there from July to August.
“The best part was meeting people and being able to immerse myself in the culture and hospitality of the Italians,” he said.
Learning Italian was not too difficult for him because of his zeal for languages. Tneoh has also been singing Italian songs for the duration of his time at Ouachita as part of his major.
“I also had the opportunity to take diction class when I was a freshman in Ouachita and that has helped tremendously,” said Tneoh.
In diction, students are required to learn the International Phonetic Alphabet for English as well as Italian. They must learn an Italian song and perform it in front of the class for a grade on their grasp of the Italian pronunciation of words.
“My host family was made up of great people,” Tneoh said. “My host mom and dad spoke little English. They probably spoke as much English as I did Italian when I first got there. Funny fact: I speak a little German and my host mom spoke German, so we ended up speaking German, Italian and English in the beginning. That helped with just a lot of translating and, by the end of the 5 week program, my Italian had improved so much.”
Tneoh said that his best memory of the trip was the last night of the program. They all went out to an old hunting lodge called the Barco and laid out there to watch a meteor shower.
This was not Tneoh’s first trip to Italy. He has traveled there by himself as well as with the Ouachita Singers in the summer of 2010.
Tneoh was also involved in this year’s opera “Hansel and Gretel”. He played the wood-cutting father of Hansel and Gretel.
“It was definitely a role that has grown me both as a singer and as an actor,” Tneoh said. “The preparation into making this show a success was definitely a rough but worthwhile experience.”
The show was double-cast, so he shared the role of the father with Joel Rogier, a junior vocal performance major.
“It was great to have shared a role because it brings more ideas to the table, and we got to learn from each other,” Tneoh said. “The challenges both vocally and acting wise would not have been overcome without great directors and fellow peers as well.”
His favorite part about being involved in the opera was the friendships that were built after spending almost every day together for three months.
“When we step out of our comfort zone, our home, and venture into an unknown place,” said Tneoh, “It’s amazing how God will cross people in our paths and change our lives.”
Tneoh is hoping that his future will include graduate school.
“I’m keeping my fingers crossed,” he said.
