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Classical music at the foot of the Andes, the academy that transforms the lives of Latin American youth

2021-01-24T20:52:29.815Z


In the Portillo ski center, a festival is held that encourages new talents in the region International Academy of Music Portillo Festival in January 2020, in Chile.Felipe Elgueta Frontier The impact of the social transformation of classical music has been one of the main impulses of the Festival Academia Internacional de Música Portillo, which ends this Sunday its third edition from the top of the Andes mountain range, in Chile, near the border with Argentina. It is a privileged moun


International Academy of Music Portillo Festival in January 2020, in Chile.Felipe Elgueta Frontier

The impact of the social transformation of classical music has been one of the main impulses of the Festival Academia Internacional de Música Portillo, which ends this Sunday its third edition from the top of the Andes mountain range, in Chile, near the border with Argentina.

It is a privileged mountainous landscape.

One of the best ski centers that for a few days is transformed into a huge multinational orchestra, overlooking the Inca lagoon.

Although this year the meeting was held remotely due to the covid-19 pandemic - only the management team is on the ground -, the spirit remained the same as in the two previous years: around fifty musicians in training between 18 and 30 years, especially from Latin America, with scholarships to listen to the best and learn daily in the private classes of the stars of learned music in the world.

Music festivals with educational purposes are common in Europe and the United States, but not in Latin America.

Less with a comprehensive and motivating look, where music is combined with leadership, yoga or medicine classes.

It is an initiative of the Chilean Alejandra Urrutia (Concepción, 1975), orchestra director and since 2016, the first woman to direct the Chamber Orchestra of the Municipal Theater of Santiago, one of the main ones in the South American country.

The violinist knows about the influence of classical music on children and young people: since 2007 and for nine years she directed the orchestra of Curanilahue, a town about 600 kilometers south of Santiago de Chile that was once known only for its mining tradition , simplicity and social problems, such as unemployment and alcoholism.

But in 1995, the visionary musician Américo Giusti founded the youth orchestra that definitely changed his identity.

Currently, after three generations of the group, the town is recognized both in Chile and abroad for transforming itself into an engine of new talents, which twisted its hand in a difficult environment.

"Music is a transforming agent of lives and communities," says Urrutia, who, motivated by this experience, is now trying to bring the greats of music closer to students from all over the region at the festival that started on Wednesday.

“Being the director of the Curanilahue orchestra, my own transformation occurred, because I realized the power of music.

In a city with few resources, thanks to the orchestra a profound human transformation took place ”, recalls the violinist who is currently assistant conductor of the Hungarian Iván Fischer, with the Konzerthausorchester in Berlin and the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

In a region with so many deficiencies and inequalities like Latin America, youth orchestras have changed the lives of dozens of children and young people.

One of the famous experiences has been that of Venezuela, where José Antonio Abreu founded in 1975 an organization of public music schools,

El Sistema

, which has been replicated in 40 countries.

Its iconic ambassador is director Gustavo Dudamel, who was trained with Abreu.

At the Festival Academia Internacional de Música Portillo, which has free and online activities for the general public, the Colombian María Paula Parias recounted the experience of the Fundación Nacional Batuta de Colombia, which since the beginning of the 90s works for the construction of social fabric through music with children, adolescents and youth.

In the virtual meeting,

How does classical music have an impact on social transformation?

, the president of the foundation reported that, in certain social contexts, children do not spend time at school or with their parents "represents a high risk."

It is when the musical center and the practice of an instrument appear as a space of “welcome and happiness”.

"The project has a significant impact on the prevention of violence and forced recruitment by groups outside the law," said the president of the National Batuta Foundation, which is currently promoting a citizen campaign to donate 18,000 flutes.

The power of classical music in social transformation is evidenced by dozens of examples of young Latin American musicians who have jumped from humble orchestras in the region to big theaters.

Students from Curanilahue, for example, have come to the Orquesta de las Américas or the Berlin Symphony.

Transformed lives, such as those of Diego Campos, 26, who began studying violin at age seven with Urrutia in Curanilahue and is currently studying for a master's degree in the United States: “Classical music in a mining camp?

It sounded quite strange ”, reflects the musician.

“The orchestra was what marked my childhood and that of my friends.

My whole childhood is related to music.

The first time I got to know the capital was thanks to music and the first time I left Chile it was thanks to music.

It changed our lives, because it allowed us to dream, ”says violinist Campos before boarding the plane that will take him back to Dallas, where he has been studying for six years.

For Yarella Alvear, a 24-year-old violinist born in Curanilahue, "the orchestra came to a city of great poverty to offer us opportunities."

Both she and her older sister made music their lives, thanks to the support of their parents and their teacher.

Now, therefore, she tries to give back in some way what she received as a child: she teaches the violin to little musicians from Nacimiento, near her hometown.

Among the main figures who have participated in this third version of the festival that takes place every January in the middle of the Chilean Andes is the violinist Kim Kaloyanides (associate concertmaster of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra), violinist Justin Bruns (associate concertmaster of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra) or cellist Katri Ervamaa (professor at University of Michigan Residential College).

This 2021, 52 young Latin American musicians have learned from them.

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2021-01-24

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