Developing new ways of being a musician
Using technology as a tool for teaching and performing is nothing new for the Barcelona Festival of Song. We started using the Internet2 in 2011, when for the first time, we hosted classes and concerts simultaneously in Barcelona and São Paulo, Brazil. This pioneering experience is documented in the article New ways of making music and being a musician in the digital era, recently published at Diagonal, an academic journal of the University of California.
As we all know, Covid19 is affecting international travel; at the BFOS, we see this situation as an opportunity to spread the Latin American and Iberian vocal repertoire to bigger audiences. Why? Because to celebrate our 18th anniversary, we will host the BFOS in Barcelona and simultaneously over the Internet.
The online BFOS will allow singers and voice teachers who, in the past, could not afford to travel to Barcelona, to participate in all our masterclasses, lectures, and diction classes. They will also have private coaching sessions to improve the interpretation of the repertoire assigned to each of them.
Participants will be able to connect from all over the world, getting together with kindred spirits, meeting people who are equally passionate about learning new repertoire, adventurous musicians who want to defy the anachronistic curriculum of educational institutions by learning the vocal repertoire in Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese.
Students will have the opportunity to work with a faculty of experts, led by Dr. Patricia Caicedo, a soprano and musicologist, a leading performer, and researcher of the Iberian and Latin American repertoire. On top of participating in the conferences and classes, each of the students will have six 20 minute private lessons of interpretation to work with his or her assigned songs. There will also be for each singer, two 20 minute diction sessions.
The concerts of the Barcelona Festival of Song will be broadcast live from different parts of the world. The final student´s concert will be broadcast from the Biblioteca de Catalunya in Barcelona, one of the most important cultural venues in the city. The singers who can't come in person will participate in it from their own countries via streaming; it will be a global online concert streamed on the main online platforms and open to the public.
To participate you have to register using our online registration form. Once you have been accepted and formalized your participation one of our experts will design a personalized repertoire, unique for your voice and level of development. Your repertoire will have 12 songs: 4 in Spanish, 4 in Catalan, and 4 in Portuguese, these songs are the ones you will prepare and perfect for your final concert. The lectures will be done in the afternoon in Barcelona to allow students in Europe and the Americas to participate, including the West Coast. The private coaching sessions will be adjusted to the time zone and needs of each student.
Partial scholarships are available.
Watch a video that shows the use of technology in the Barcelona Festival of Song.
Register today to the online Barcelona festival of song
Star developing a unique repertoire in Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese.