A one-of-a-kind learning experience
The story of the CIVIS Orchestra Academy started in 2022, along with its first representation at the National Theatre La Criée in Marseille, France. The programme was “a victim of its own success”, being carried out again in Madrid (2023) and this past June in Rome.
Just like any other BIP, the Orchestra had both virtual and physical components. During the first, conductors (Maria Bazou - NKUA, Josè Maria Alvarez Munoz - UAM, Sebastien Boin - AMU, Demetrio Moricca - SUR) introduced themselves, presented their vision of the selected pieces, their choices of tempo, and gave students indications so that they could study their parts before going to Rome, for the week long, in person rehearsals, explained Daniele Gorla, the coordinator of the last edition of the programme. He is associate professor in Computer Science at SUR and plays the violin within the orchestra:
Music has always remained in my heart as a way of expressing my innermost personality, my most irrational being. Even if I do something else in life, when I pick up the violin, a whole other level comes into play, and that's the level where I can really express my deepest being. These five days, with these guys who have come from the various partner institutions, we are locked in here for eight hours a day and rehearsing intensely. Because assembling an orchestra from scratch and performing a programme that could easily be on the billboard of any professional concert season is obviously a very complicated thing".
And the most interesting aspect is that not only professor Gorla is doing something else in his day-to-day life, but so are most of the students participating in the BIP. One of them is the Tübingen’s medicine student Imke Kienzle:
A lot of people who study medicine make music, I think there are simply two disciplines that go very well together, as music expresses so many emotions. I like making music myself, I like listening to music - it's just a great passion. And it's very nice to be able to do it here abroad in an international context and that CIVIS made this possible.
But not all the students participating in the BIP play an instrument. Maria Bazou is from Greece and she is one of the Orchestra’s conductors:
As a conductor and a new composer, I will say that music is my life and every day I only deal with music and I could not imagine my life without being a conductor. The arts in general and music in particular are something that brings people together. Even if we have nothing in common, it is even more interesting to learn the culture from other countries. And for me it is really remarkable that universities in Europe which are not specialized in music, but engaged in philology, law, medicine, yet they have an orchestra and have this opportunity to organise something so big and so important".
Music as breathing air
Although they all come from different countries, with different cultures, languages and have different personalities, no matter who you’d choose among the students to talk to, you’d feel in their voice the same passion and joy.
"Since I was little, I have always loved music, but not only music itself, but sharing it with others, which I think is the most important thing, says Eidan Oba Fleitas Cabrera, Musicology and Philosophy student at UAM and flute player. And Eleonora Zedda, a Medicine student from SUR and cello player, completes him:
Music can be so many things, because it's fun, it's support in difficult moments, it's communication, union, it's a language. It's a constant that's been with me all my life and that I can't do without".
The students' mature and professional behaviour when, for example, one of them made a mistake during the rehearsals, stood out. Although they barely knew each other, they managed to treat each moment with the attitude of a an experimented musician.
"I think we're all used to playing in an orchestra, so we just keep playing and it doesn't matter, it's part of the game too. We accept that everyone makes mistakes because that's normal. We learn and so we start again and try to improve together", explained very naturally and relaxed Clotilde Vion, an Engineering student at AMU and oboe player.
Looking towards the future
Like any beautiful dream, this one also ended. For graduating students, this year’s programme was the last. And some of them are now facing maybe one of the most difficult decisions of their lives so far:
I started playing percussion at around the age of ten, and I continued to play during my studies. I'm studying engineering (at ULB), and at the same time, I take music classes at the conservatory. And now I'm finishing my studies and I'm wondering if I should get an engineering job or continue studying music and go to the conservatory and become a professional musician, was Simon Alexandre's dilemma.
Because this is what music does to people: it pulls them into a world of magic, where all that matters is the rhythm, the sounds, the never-ending combination of notes and instruments and possibilities. A world with no boundaries, no languages, no colors, no age or gender. Only a union of souls and spirits aiming for the greatness.
The next CIVIS Orchestra BIP will take place in Bucharest in June 2026. We cannot wait.
