Voice the Music

STRUGA, 16 - 21 OCTOBER, 2012

Partnering organizations: Jeunesses Musicales Serbia, Exces Music Romania, Glazbena Mladez Hrvatske

European Cultural Foundation

Young musicians and music professionals from Eastern Europe often face difficulties in approaching a career path that is innovative, new and "thinking out of the box" when it comes to already established formal presentations of the music experience. Music is confined to the concert hall experience, and sociologically it is not a place where people can interact, share ideas or impressions. Audience comes to the concert, detaching itself from reality, and leaves the concert, detaching from the concert experience. No interaction exists between musicians and audience, leading to somewhat "sterile" performances. Furthermore, cultural funding mostly remains focused on formal and existing institutions like philharmonic orchestras, operas, without any potential to support extracurricular and non formal approaches to music performances usually cherished by the cultural NGO sector.

The overarching long-term objective of the project is to bring arts closer to the audience through mutual education of, and interaction between stage (venue), musicians, organizers and audiences. It will do so by focusing on young musicians, young music professionals and music educators, enabling them to develop skills of innovative presentation of music and engaging audiences into concerts.

The target group enables us to work across a particular performance field hoping to change existing standards that impact all participants in the artistic process. Participants will benefit from transfer of know-how with experienced lecturers from Denmark and Belgium, where innovative approach to music in schools, audience development and skills enhancement for young musicians.

The training course will bring together music promoters and young musicians from Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, Ukraine and Slovenia.