CuE – Cuban-European Youth Academy
A Project of Akademie Balthasar Neumann in cooperation with the Rheingau Musik Festival
Brief description
As a transatlantic youth academy, CuE is cultural exchange come alive. 60 young musicians from Cuba and Europe are meeting in August 2015 for a two-week academy project in the Rheingau region in Germany. With Thomas Hengelbrock, they will rehearse orchestra works, perform in chamber music formation, attend workshops on Cuban music and historically informed performance, and receive individual instruction.
Background
Rhumba, son and salsa… The fact that the Caribbean island state is home to a richly diverse musical culture has been known at least since the Buena Vista Social Club project initiated by Ry Cooder and the documentary movie of the same title by Wim Wenders. At that time, in the late 1990s, a wave of enthusiasm for the vibrant Cuban music scene was born. Also born were a number of efforts to initiate transatlantic cultural exchange. Now, however, 20 years later, this exchange is still in its infancy.
With the project “La música clásica europea en el entorno social de la Habana Vieja“, supported by the EU, the Mozarteum Salzburg foundation has been pursuing a new approach to cultural exchange between Cuba and Europe since 2012. Masterclasses taught by European conductors for musicians studying at the Lyceum Mozartino de la Habana are the centrepiece of this programme.
In spring 2014, Thomas Hengelbrock and musicians of the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble which he founded went on a visit to Havana, organized in cooperation with the Mozarteum foundation. They worked there for a week with students at the Lyceum. This phase of work culminated in an enthusiastically received concert performance, which included Beethoven’s Third Symphony as well as Cuban music.
The ensemble’s musicians as well as Thomas Hengelbrock himself were so impressed with the Cuban students’ thirst for knowledge and eagerness to learn that they came up with new ideas to further develop and expand the project in Europe. They wanted to make their sincere wish come true: to return some of the hospitality they enjoyed in Cuba and to make sure that the openness to learning now things should be unlimited. Thus, they initiated a shared academy project facilitating exchange between Cuban and European music students and giving these students the opportunity to publicly perform the repertoire they rehearsed together in a series of concerts. The selection of European participants in the academy took place in auditions in Frankfurt (Main) in early January 2015.
Objectives
During their formative stay in Cuba, the musicians of the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble and Thomas Hengelbrock realized how eminently important and motivating cultural exchange can be.
Their courage to move across borders, to be open to new things, and the desire to exchange ideas, demonstrate and experience hospitality, and make classical music come alive is what characterises the young Cuban musicians. CuE was founded in order to give them the opportunity to do so, and to allow European musicians to participate in enriching cultural exchange in turn. We are convinced that shared experience is a better opportunity to learn about each other than any lecture on history, any Caribbean holiday, and any film about Cuba.
The hope is that lasting cooperation between Cuban and European music students will grow from the project. The participating academicians profit from the shared work, which becomes a link between the training they receive in their own countries and different styles of work and music. CuE considers itself an intercultural development project for young talent which fosters and supports continual and sustained training.
Insight into historically informed performance, comparative presentations of different playing techniques and hands-on experience with instruments of all ages are setting new didactic standards. The European and Cuban students participating in CuE explore this new territory side by side – they depart from comparable bases and encounter questions and works which often are not part of their regular academic curricula.
CuE: Cuban-European Youth Academy will take place from 17 to 28 August 2015 under the direction of Thomas Hengelbrock as part of the Rheingau Musik Festival. The young musicians will have a wide selection of offerings, activities and concerts to choose from. In rehearsals and workshops, instructors will take the knowledge and skills of the European and Cuban musicians as a point of departure for continual expansion and development. Chamber music rehearsals led by members of the Balthasar Neumann Ensembles further complement the teaching programme. The academy and the rehearsals are hosted by the Wilhelm-Kempf-Haus in Wiesbaden.
The Balthasar Neumann Ensembles will bring historical instruments for the students and will offer special workshops on historically informed performance, a specialty only few students are familiar with. They will demonstrate and explain playing techniques, sound phenomena and special characteristics of all instruments before students will be invited to gain hands-on experience themselves.
A “Cuban Night” in Wiesbaden, featuring Cuban jazz and a joint session, will be the Rheingau Festival’s “Cuban Week” opening event. A “switch-through” concert in Johannisberg palace, where musicians form a number of ensembles with changing participants to present the chamber music repertoires developed together will show off the young musician’s entire spectrum. There is one symphonic piece that will be rehearsed and performed by all participants under the conductorship of Thomas Hengelbrock: Robert Schumann’s Fourth Symphony. All full rehearsals will be open to the public. The audience can directly experience how an orchestra grows together and rehearses. On August 27, 2015, the orchestra academy will close with a grand final concert in Wiesbaden’s Kurhaus spa centre and casino. A panel discussion with academy participants is being prepared.
Thanks to the Hans Thomann Foundation
We want to express our sincere gratitude to Hans Thomann Foundation for their support.
The gut strings and other instrument equipment donated by the foundation were received gratefully by the Cuban musicians, many of whom had tears of joy in their eyes. The additional donated instruments will be used in the music school in Havana.
Contact:
Christina Schonk
Artistic Managing Dirtector
Balthasar-Neumann-Chor und -Ensemble
Wallstraße 12
79098 Freiburg
