Project report, “Resonanz” Music Project, Kerala (India)

“Resonanz“ is a music project implemented by Anna Amy Philips in Kerala, southern India, in cooperation with German musicians and the Goethe Institut. The project’s goal was to popularise classical Western music in India in the hope that more and more children would develop an interest in Western instruments. The project pursues the aim of introducing Keralan children and teenagers to the instruments used in classical Western music, in particular to the cello and the viola, which are unknown in large parts of India to this very day. Furthermore, a concert in Kochi and another one in Trivandrum, which was attended by Kerala’s Prime Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, were also part of the project.

In the long term, Anna Amy Philips intends the project to be a step on the way towards opening a music school in Kerala, which in turn she hopes will become the seed of a symphony orchestra. The members of the orchestra will all be Indian students at the music school who will be taught by certified teachers from Europe. Musicians from Germany will be hired to teach the students. Two German musicians who worked on the first round of the “Resonanz” project are Daniel Hoffmann (cello) and Anna-Lena Zenner (viola). They spent two weeks in Kerala with Anna Amy Philips and led successful violin, cello, and viola workshops at a number of schools.

The Hans Thomann Foundation donated three cellos to the project, which have since been made fully available to the students in Kerala. Since access to western musical instruments remains limited in India, this support is vital and very helpful to the project. With further support from Germany and from institutions such as the Hans Thomann Foundation, the project promises to be sustainable in the long term, too, and will be set on a sound footing for future success.