A Talent That Spans All Borders : Music: A gifted Vietnamese mandolin player from Westminster will be among the featured performers tonight at a benefit concert at OCC.

When 9-year-old Phong Quan Do heard his older sister practicing guitar in the family’s Saigon home in 1975, the boy knew he wanted to make the same delicate acoustic music.

But Do was very small from birth--he would only grow to 4 feet in height--and because of a weakened pelvis, he needed crutches to walk. So his sister’s music teacher suggested the flat-backed mandolin, a perfectly manageable instrument for the boy’s size. Do has not stopped playing since.

Do and his sister, Giang Dhu Do, who moved to Westminster with their parents less than two years ago, will be among the featured performers tonight at the eighth annual Vietnamese Student Assn. benefit concert at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, where both are students.

The concert, “Vietnam and Human Love,” will raise funds for children in refugee camps in Southeast Asia. About 20 other student and professional performers also will be featured, said Dat Huy Phan, a Garden Grove attorney who is faculty adviser to the student association.

Do’s parents moved to Saigon from North Vietnam in 1954, after the peace settlement with Ho Chi Minh’s Vietminh divided the country. His mother taught primary school, and his father operated a print shop. That ended in 1975, after the Communist victory, when Do’s father was no longer permitted to work.

Do continued his private lessons through primary and secondary school and then studied for two years in a Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) music school. He formed a trio--with his sister on guitar and another mandolin player who since emigrated and now lives in Pomona--and played professionally for small groups and social gatherings in Vietnam. The family came to Orange County, Do said, to be near relatives who had settled here.

Although he plays popular as well as traditional Vietnamese music on the two handmade mandolins he brought from Ho Chi Minh City, Do’s favorite composers are European--Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Paganini, Bach and Beethoven. Do says that if he can find the sheet music, he’d like to try bluegrass music next.

Arlene Karr-Powell, head of the piano department and professor of music at OCC, said she was “extremely impressed” with Do’s performance at a student recital and suggested he enter a competition sponsored by the Orange County Musicians’ Assn., Local 7.

Another music professor, Edyth Smith, head of the college’s music theory department, arranged for concert pianist Ana Maria Eckstein to work with Do and to accompany him at the competition. Eckstein refused to take payment for her instruction.

In May, Do won a $200 scholarship prize at the Local 7 competition.

“He’s truly amazing,” said union staff member Keeran Reidling. “He’s a very talented musician.”

When Do played for the OCC student music club, “he moved people to tears with his music,” recalled Alexis O’Donahue, the group’s president. “People were crying with the beauty of it.”

These days, most of Do’s time is taken up studying music, math and for his English-as-a-second-language classes. In Vietnam, he practiced his music three to six hours a day; now he works in sessions when he can. In order to earn a stable income, Do plans to transfer to UC Irvine or UCLA and major in computer science.

This disturbs O’Donahue.

“He’s the kind person who should be traveling around the country, playing for groups and in schools,” O’Donahue said. “His music really brings joy. He’s a lovely person. He has a lot of tenderness shining out of him.”

“Vietnam and Human Love” benefit concert will be tonight at 6:30 at the Robert B. Moore Theatre, Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $5 at the door. Information: (714) 839-4812 or (714) 530-2156.