I invited R. Murray Schafer, the renowned Canadian composer, music pedagogue and creator of the concept of soundscape, to conduct Coimbra Vibra!.
We kick-started the idea in April 2002 and formal preparations for the project started in the following October with workshops in which over 100 teachers of the Greater Coimbra area participated. More workshops and rehearsals followed and went on throughout 2003 (see the photos on your left) with more participants, involving practically every musician, group, teacher and student in Coimbra.
All this work was designed to create a consciousness for an acoustically balanced environment. It was aimed at changing both musicians, authorities and Coimbra's inhabitants in general into active, sensitive and critic listeners of the environment. Better listeners and with it perhaps better, more engaged citizens.
In addition it was a unique and beautiful sonic event!!
These preparations lead into a final event which took place on October 4th 2003. This event involved over 1,200 musicians and soundmakers, and over 500 students and was attended by over 8,000 thousand people throughout the streets and squares of old downtown and upper-town Coimbra. All Coimbra, its authorities, inhabitants and organizations participated in one way or the other. It was a unique event. Pure magic! Utopia made true! Coimbra never witnessed a musical event of this nature and magnitude before.
In this extraordinary endeavor Schafer was assisted by Portuguese musician, music teacher, instrument builder and member of the popular group Gaiteiros de Lisboa, Carlos Guerreiro and a fabulous production team. The avant-premiere of Coimbra Vibra! took place on June 16th during an event aimed specifically at the participating teachers and respective students we called Coimbrinha Vibra!.
It gathered over 1,200 children from 32 schools, dozens of teachers and students of the Coimbra School of Education in a never before seen ritual of sound at the Choupal National Park in Coimbra (photos on the left).
Coimbra Vibra!: The city of Coimbra was both the stage, the public and the orchestra of a major musical and acoustic consciousness raising ritual.
(photos by Carlos Alberto Augusto, Hugo Augusto, Fábrica de Conteúdos and Mónica Jardim)
