By: Meryl Chen | Photo By: Elly John Carig
“Music frequency [the speed of the vibration that determines the pitch of the sound] touches the soul,” believes Rotarian Jeanette Kamphuis of the Rotary Club of Makati Gems. A Swedish violinist, Kamphuis came to the Philippines four years ago to teach children how to play the instrument, as a volunteer. She collaborated with the Department of Social Work and Development (DSWD) visiting hospitals, participating in community services, and cheering up the sick. Of all the countries she’s visited (counting 97 today), she found that the Philippines is where she finds fulfilment doing her self-appointed mission.
Eventually, a fellow artist and a member of RC Makati Gems invited her to join the club. Here she found a niche in service playing the violin for the wards of Tahanan ng Pagmamahal, an orphanage operated by the DSWD, where she also sponsors the violin lessons of a few students.
“Seeing the astonishment in the eyes of my young audience, as if they haven’t heard the sound of a violin yet, gives me the greatest pleasure,” Kamphuis says..
A resident of Helsingborg, Sweden, Kamphuis comes from a family of artists. Like her two other siblings, of which she is the youngest, she learned music from her father who incredibly taught them to play almost all the musical instruments at a young age. It took her only a year to learn how to play the violin, at the age of eight.
Apart from being a professional violinist, Kamphuis is also a visual artist, a writer, and an actress. A lover of the school of surrealism, she shows off her current work (50 paintings to date) in her office.
Happiness for Kamphuis is making other people happy—be it in creating a beautiful painting, writing a touching poem, or deliver a gripping performance on stage. But playing the violin will always be on top of this list. “When you play the violin, you are being in harmony with both the environment and the people in it,” she says.
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