This year was so intense that I lost the deadline to send the already traditional text that Concerto Magazine always asks me for the January edition. I will then use this social media bias to play the same role.
As 2015 was particularly difficult for many of us, and the outlook for 2016 is still not the best, memory exercise becomes more complicated. There were so many mistakes and the consequences so frightening that when trying to list the most serious cases, it would certainly leave something important out.
I prefer to remember here what worked, hoping to inspire new solutions to the problems that await us.
The first thing that comes to my mind is actually an issue. I look for some other program that offers or has already offered a member of a young orchestra the richness and variety of starting the year playing Berlioz's Fantastic Symphony under the regency of Maxim Vengerov, who was also a soloist of the Tchaikovsky Concert at the time , Then represent Brazil at an International Conference at the Guildhall School in London, live in their own city an intense and exceptional musical and human experience with the violinist Midori Goto, play six world premieres at the opening of a Biennial of Contemporary Music in the emblematic Theater Municipal de Rio de Janeiro, and also end the year raising funds for a noble cause, accompanying Ivete Sangalo with MPB of the highest quality in a football stadium full and with live broadcast to the whole country. All this without ceasing to learn and teach. I have not yet found another program that offered what NEOJIBA provided, even in a year of crisis, to the members of the Bahia Youth Orchestra. Maybe the "El Systema"? Help me if I'm wrong.
As NEOJIBA is much more than a young orchestra of excellence, it is important to remember some of the actions we took in 2015: We started the year with our traditional Pedagogical Seminar, enabling our monitors and managers of the Orchestral Projects Network, we opened a new building workshop Of plastic instruments, we expanded our capacity to perform in traditional luthier, foment 3 regional orchestras in the interior of Bahia, multiplied the actions of "NEOJIBA in the Neighborhoods" and offered a new generation of passionate members, the OCA boys and girls, a Orchestral tour with professional standards in 7 Northeastern states! In addition we brought knowledge, orchestral, choral and chamber music (including creating a new series called "Concertando no SESI") to the four corners of the state of Bahia, and we maintained important exchanges and institutional support. These and many other actions are listed on the NEOJIBA website, demonstrating that this was another year of many battles and victories for our program.
As a teacher, pianist and conductor, I had the privilege of starting a new concept of online classes, iClassical, to see the excellent performance of talented and dedicated students, including an award in international competition, to know serious and innovative works such as the State Orchestra of the Espírito Santo, to participate in several international conferences, to give more solo recitals, to conduct our Youth of Bahia and to perform marathon concerts in the best musical institutions of the country, such as the Minas Philharmonic and the Municipal Theater of São Paulo.
I also take advantage of this retrospective for some important clarifications. By the way, anyone who follows me on Facebook may have watched some video from the series "RC TALKS". These are excerpts from conversations and conferences published on the Internet, not only to remember what I'm saying, but also to emphasize that my mother tongue is really Music! So when I talk about improvising in public, I often express myself incompletely or confusedly. (I should follow the example of Ivete Sangalo who decorates everything up to the lines ...)
Precisely, I learned that in one of my speeches, in 2014 (!), A correction was pending, the lack of which provoked some discussion in the Bahian academic environment. It was in Los Angeles, during the first tour of the Bahia Youth Orchestra in the USA. We were in the city at the same time as the famous Simon Bolivar Orchestra, and before the encore, as usual, I spoke to the public (who had certainly never heard of Bahian symphonic orchestras), which in our 500 years of history no one had remembered To create a youth orchestra before the Venezuelans showed the way. A critic of the Los Angeles Times present at the concert and who mistook some information, like to think that I was replacing another conductor in that concert, in trying to transcribe my English, published in a long article what he understood, removing the term JUVENIL from the phrase! Imagine the damage! My intention was not to take credit from anyone, but rather to thank, as I always do and always will, the brave pioneers of El Sistema, for opening the prestigious doors in the northern hemisphere to South American youth orchestras. With incomplete transcription , It seemed that I would be disregarding the all-important legacy of EMUS and OSBA in the orchestral arena.
As it was not an interview, but a musical criticism (very fair by the way), I did not think that some Bahian readers would take the article literally without even asking me for some clarification, since everyone in Bahia can speak to me easily.
I also knew that even re-including the term "juvenile" in the phrase, there would still be people who find my speech wrong. They argue, referring to a commendable initiative of the city of Salvador in creating the Youth Orchestra on the outskirts of the city, that in Bahia there was another youth orchestra before the implementation of NEOJIBA. It was a program that lasted little, but that left positive marks. I visited the project in 2005, when I began to financially support projects with children in Bahia. For several reasons that are not enough to clarify now, I chose at the time to support the Axé Project. I also learned at the same time, by Professor Oscar Dourado, responsible for the idea and the implantation, that the Orchestra of Youth had been inspired by the experience of the same "The System" of Venezuela! Hence my talk about the importance of Venezuela in the awakening of orchestral art to the Bahian youth.
I copied here, and I translate for information, the excerpt from the article published in Los Angeles Times, without the term "juvenile" that the critic in question took from my speech:
"But in comments that the Bahia orchestra's music director, Ricardo Castro, made to the audience after the wonderful performances, he said no one had ever had, in the 500-year history of the Bahia region, the idea to start an orchestra until the Notion and support came from neighboring Venezuela. "
"But in comments that Bahia's musical director, Ricardo Castro, made to the audience after the marvelous performances, he said that no one had ever had the idea of starting an orchestra in the 500 years of Bahia's history (the word "juvenile" should come here) until the method and the support came from neighboring Venezuela "
Anyone who wants to read the full review, just search on Google for NEOJIBA and the Los Angeles Times.
In the hope of ending once and for all with any doubt on the subject, I endorse the following:
Before Venezuela shows the example and the way, I am not aware of any Bahian institution that, in the 500 years of European colonization, has invested in the orchestral capacities of young people and children to the height of the enormous abilities demonstrated by them since joining the NEOJIBA program in 2007.
That said, I thank everyone for the love and unconditional support I received in this year 2015 and announce a 2016 full of moments of beauty, but also important challenges, with more stimulating classes and concerts, with adjustments in the functioning of the main orchestras Of NEOJIBA due to the increasing participation of its members in the superior music courses, with projects ready and approved to begin the requalification works of the Queimado Park, site of our future headquarters that will have a construction standard equivalent to the best musical institutions in the world and With important transversal actions between the Secretariats of Justice, Human Rights and Social Development, Culture and Education so that more children and young people have access to beauty through the collective practice of music.
I wish everyone a new year full of accomplishments and I invite, once again, everyone to join us!
We are few in our world of education and so-called academic music and in the face of strong and violent contrary currents, we can not waste time or energy with disagreements. Who does not understand who asks, who does not agree to cause the debate, but before everything PARTICIPE!
"Who knows the time, does not expect to happen"
