Return Engagement : The man who wrote ‘Good Morning, Vietnam’ is going back to the distant, impoverished country to heal lingering wounds with music

The faint sounds of classical music caught the interest of the American tourist. He stepped off the carefully arranged tour and saw a side of Vietnam his official guide was not supposed to show him.

A teen-age girl, with black hair and slender fingers, was playing Bach on a broken-down piano in a dim conservatory in the city of Hue, the country’s artistic center before the war.

Her technique was almost flawless. But over and over, whenever she got midway through the piece, she returned to the beginning. Mitch Markowitz asked his guide why the girl didn’t finish.

“He said she didn’t have the rest of the music,” Markowitz recalled of the 1988 trip. “He thought it was funny.”

Markowitz, 39, who wrote the screenplay for “Good Morning, Vietnam,” became enraged. His guide quickly escorted him away from the embarrassing scene--a glimpse of the government’s failure to rebuild the nation. But he hasn’t forgotten the girl in Hue.

“I knew at that moment that I would be back,” said Markowitz, a Pacific Palisades resident. “In my limited way, this is all I can do. We were all part of this war, watching Walter Cronkite on TV tell us the body count, watching villagers being tortured. I wanted to do something.”

This week, almost five years later, Markowitz is going back. He is taking the group he formed in the mid-1980s, the Pacifica Quartet, to give concerts and workshops in eight Vietnamese cities. The quartet will also donate sheet music and instruments, including complete Mozart scores, collected from private sources.

“I have always felt guilty about the war,” said Diane Reedy of Tujunga, who plays viola in the quartet. “Maybe I can right a wrong that was done.”

The trip is being coordinated by the U. S. Committee for Scientific Cooperation With Vietnam, a private group established to build hospitals and set up medical programs there. In addition, the Vietnamese government has endorsed the quartet’s efforts to make the trip.

Judith Ladinsky, who heads the committee, said the trip is another step toward normalizing relations between the two countries.

“This is the first professional music group that will perform in Vietnam,” said Ladinsky, who chairs the department of preventive medicine at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “This is a great opportunity to break down the political barriers between these two peoples. It’s a chance for people of one culture to meet people from another.”

For Markowitz, his dream at first seemed unattainable.

A big problem was money. The trip is costing the quartet about $20,000. Markowitz tried to raise funds through private sources, but finally realized that he would have to spend his own money. Eventually, longtime quartet members Ruth Siegel (violin) and Priscilla Taylor (cello) and newcomer Reedy also agreed to pay their own expenses. All hope to be partially reimbursed if they receive private donations after the trip.

Another problem was finding a violist. The group’s original viola player couldn’t go to Vietnam because his wife was having a baby.

They auditioned about half a dozen professional violists, but either the chemistry didn’t work or the musicians couldn’t afford the trip. Markowitz nearly lost hope.

“I always thought about the trip,” he said, “but then I realized that it wouldn’t happen unless I let go. I believe you give something all you can and then forget about it, and then it seems to happen.”

The breakthrough came when the three played with Reedy in October. The verdict was unanimous.

“A string quartet is like a family,” Taylor said. “More groups have broken up because of personal problems than anything else. It has to click, and we did. We’re all going to be together for three weeks in a Third World country. We better be able to get along.”

Since then, the quartet has practiced every week or two. For years, the musicians have performed separately at area schools, but a November concert at the Unitarian Church in North Hills was the first time they played together in public. About 100 people showed up.

For Markowitz, playing music in a faraway part of the world is not new. In high school, he belonged to the Long Island Youth Orchestra. Its conductor was also a travel agent who arranged inexpensive excursions to New Zealand, Australia, the Caribbean and Western Europe to play music.

But Markowitz is concerned that the trip may not go as planned.

“If we play at least half of our concerts for regular people, I’ll be satisfied,” he said. “But I’m sure the whole thing will be very disorganized.”

The quartet plans concerts in Ho Chi Minh City, Nha Trang, Da Nang, Hanoi and other cities not yet determined, and will play music ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to a classical rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.”

They will also give workshops in violin, cello and viola in the same places. One objective is to encourage students who might be eligible to earn music scholarships in the United States.

Sightseeing is also on the agenda. “The last time I was there, I saw a country that was a shell of a place,” Markowitz said. “This place had been full of life before the war. I’m curious to see what it will be like now.”

He is also curious about returning to Hue. The group plans to give a concert at the conservatory where he heard the girl playing Bach. Markowitz doesn’t expect to find her, but hopes to help other music students.

“That is one place I will not miss,” Markowitz said.