The Vale Música Program, an initiative of the Vale Cultural Institute, is a collaborative network that encourages connections and exchanges of experiences between professional orchestras, teachers and students of musical education projects in four Brazilian states: Minas Gerais, Pará, Espírito Santo and Mato Grosso do Sul. In the context of the global pandemic, the question arose: how to maintain the activities of the program that is based on living and sharing knowledge even from a distance? How to make virtual classes interesting and efficient?
It was with these challenges that the Ouro Preto Orchestra developed the proposal to carry out an exclusive virtual project and created an unprecedented repertoire with students from the Moinho Cultural (MS), Vale Música Serra (ES) and Vale Música Belém (PA) projects. Through distance classes, specialist teachers guided students in unpublished recordings that started with the celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday.
From the theme of “Rondo”, from the famous “Violin Concerto”, seven special variations were created for the musical training projects of the Vale Música Program. The versions gained Brazilian spices, in arrangements for percussion, strings and wind instruments, all with a lot of originality and recorded from inside the students’ homes. In the end, together, these movements form a unique work that also celebrates the work done throughout 2020 between students and teachers.
For Maestro Rodrigo Toffolo, the experience was a milestone in the career of young artists. “The recording process represents a major challenge for a musician. It is leaving your mark, your sound for posterity, it is like that sports maxim says: training is training and game is game”. Along this path of exchange and learning, which culminated in recording the arrangements on video, students had the opportunity to become better and more confident musicians. The final videos corroborate the whole process through the joy, pride and self-esteem of a shared joint work.
For Christiana Saldanha, Manager of Instituto Cultural Vale, the year in isolation brought challenges, but also overcoming. “Throughout 2020, the collaborative teaching and learning network that is the Vale Música Program established an even closer connection, despite the social distance. Virtually, students raised their musical perception in a didactic process of excellence conducted by the Ouro Preto Orchestra. It is with joy that we see the end of this cycle through the videos produced and the growth of each of our students”, she says.
Below, you can check the first video of the series.
Performance of the song Moinho Corpo Funk, arranged by Leonardo Gorosito, together with the Percussion Group of the Instituto Moinho Cultural – MS. Beethoven’s theme gains the irreverence of funk and body percussion, full of personality.