OUTSIDE PRESENCE

The Importance of Collaboration Agreements for Musikene

As a leading higher music education institution in Spain, financed by the Basque Government, Musikene has recognized the strategic value of establishing collaboration agreements with various organisations. These agreements not only enrich the institution’s academic and cultural offer but also strengthen its position at a national and international level.

With over 90 agreements signed, Musikene demonstrates its commitment to:

• Expanding opportunities for students: through exchange programs, professional internships, and scholarships, Musikene students can develop their skills in different environments and enrich their musical education.
• Promoting research and artistic creation: collaboration with other institutions allows for the promotion of joint research projects, the organization of cultural events, and the promotion of the creation of new musical works.
• Strengthening ties with the cultural and social fabric: agreements with orchestras, conservatories, festivals, traditional music institutions and other cultural entities contribute to the dissemination of music and strengthen the connection between the institution and society.
• Promoting internationalization: agreements with foreign institutions facilitate the exchange of students and professors, participation in international projects, and the projection of Musikene in the global music scene.

In short, agreements are a fundamental tool for Musikene to remain a benchmark in higher music education, promoting academic excellence, innovation, and the dissemination of Basque musical culture.

List of collaboration agreements signed:

Ever since it first opened, Musikene has made Etxepare’s Jalgi hadi mundura! (“Go out into the world!”) its own motto, making an axial objective of the indispensable international integration of musicians trained in the Basque Country, alongside the wish for the school to polarize the attention of musicians from beyond its immediate community. From its first operational year, Musikene has had teachers from Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Japan and many other countries, who, taking pioneering footsteps, have ploughed a fertile furrow which has only become wider and deeper with time. We remember spells at the school from Garth Knox, Frédérique Cambreling and Erik Chapman, whose initial impulse was passed on to Pierre-Emmanuel de Maistre, Maciej Pikulski, Katalin Hajnóczy and Anthony Pay, to name but a few members of this cosmopolitan community which has made such an indelible mark on the academic history of Musikene. In this way, the school has created a rich network of international relations, involving both musicians and academic centres: this is not unrelated to Musikene’s complete commitment to the Erasmus network and the project behind it. Our teachers, students, administrative and service staff have been able to benefit from this fruitful European implement to widen their experience and expand their knowledge, and to therefore establish enriching ties for our school: each academic year, students, teachers and administrative staff members from Musikene travel to European schools, while we at Musikene welcome students and teachers from abroad. We are used to receiving requests to come here from the most prestigious schools in Europe. Teachers, students and staff from the Sibelius Academy of Helsinki, Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln (Cologne), and The Fryderyk Chopin University of Music of Warsaw, to name but a few, have applied to come and find out all about us. As things stand today, Musikene has signed agreements with 48 conservatories and music schools in 18 foreign countries, and its participation in the Association Européenne des Conservatoires, Académies de Musique et Musikhochschulen (AEC) facilitates the reinforcement of these relationships. This allows Musikene to contribute to the European programmes which are central to our teaching, and the transformation and modernisation thereof, as well as to examine the quality of educational programmes elsewhere.

In its five management stages, Musikene has developed different programmes to promote contact with guest musicians and teachers by means of masterclasses, which has facilitated the extension of the plural network in all departments and specialities: Marie-Pierre Langlamet, Raphael Haeger, Martin Fröst, Ed Neumeister, Radovan Vlatkovic, Yayoi Toda, Ivo Pogorelich and Antonella Massimo, among many others, are proof of this. In the creative field, workshops and residencies by composers have gained strength; from the earliest “Musikene Actual”, which brought us Simon Holt and Ivan Fedele, to the current collaborations with DSS2016, which have facilitated the visits of Helmut Lachenmann in 2016 and Peter Eötvös in 2017, both with markedly different profiles and objectives. The experience with Helmut Lachenmann brought about an unpublished orchestral work by means of the exploration of new instrumental resources, the première of an homage by graduate composer Mikel Urquiza, and an intense and demanding aesthetic and ideological debate in the composition workshops. The visit of Peter Eötvös took shape around his double role as composer and conductor, within a wider framework of an exchange programme with the Eötvös Foundation in Budapest. Eötvös has conducted the Musikene Orchestra in Hungarian works from Liszt to the youthful Marcell Dargay, via Bartók and Kurtág. Another activity providing an example of the dynamism of the current teaching team at Musikene is the work of Aitzol Iturriagagoitia, José Luis Estellés and Christian Wetzel, who, alongside teachers from the Hochschüle of Leipzig and Cologne (who were guests at Musikene within an exchange programme framework) developed two weeks of activities around the work of Isan Yun. This project culminated in a concert given by the Musikene Sinfonieta conducted by Manuel Nawri, a teacher at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, the Berlin Academy of Music.

Enticing prospects of our new multi-disciplinary projects are opening up to us at the moment, alongside glimpses of important tasks to be carried out. Among the latter, the job of strengthening the relationship between our closest neighbouring French conservatories, such as Bordeaux, Toulouse and Bayonne, with whom we share spaces and objectives. Over the last fifteen years that Musikene has been operational, it has rapidly consolidated an international reputation which means today it can attract musicians of undoubted interest and importance, given that Musikene students find in these musicians the necessary resonance to continue developing within themselves and to forge their own path in the field of professional music.

Under the umbrella of Musikenek-IN, Musikene has gathered together a series of projects which develop a new educational direction and commitment to its environment. It has a double objective: to take music out to all sectors of society, creating and taking part in projects voluntarily; and to educate students in values, preparing them for new professional challenges.

In line with this, Musikene, by means of its Pedagogy Department, has been developing activities for more than a decade in order to put students in contact with functionally diverse people and socio-culturally disadvantaged collectives, in subjects such as Psychopedagogy Applied to Music II, Sociology in Education, and in Final Projects.  In addition, it has collaborated in the show Synergy by the Lisarco Dance Company, which works with dancers with Down syndrome, and has taken part in training seminars on didactic and pro-integration concerts. The school is currently collaborating with the NGO Vura Project, which has a music school in Uganda. Likewise, since the 2017/18 academic year, Musikene has donated one of its concerts to a collective. The first, in May 2018, by the Musikene Symphony Orchestra and the Orfeón Donostiarra conducted by Víctor Pablo Pérez, raised funds for the Asociación contra el Cáncer (AECC) (Spanish Association Against Cancer).

Likewise, Musikene is sensitive to the needs of collectives with specific pathologies, having offered concerts over the last ten years in favour of the Katxalin, the association for women affected by breast cancer and/or gynaecological cancers. These activities are complemented by two large projects: one with the Onkologikoa oncology centre since 2016, and since 2017, the so-called Invisible Beauty project, for people with Alzheimer’s disease.

ONKOLOGIKOA

The origins go back to 2014, when, under the leadership of the Musikene Pedagogy Department, work began on the preparation of an educational music project with the aim of training music students and teaching staff in values. The project began in 2016 with the support of the European Capital of Culture DSS2016 and covered two axes of collaboration. Musikene creates and works on a team made up of music therapists, psychologists, pedagogues and musicians, which is joined by the healthcare staff of Onkologikoa, who work together in several workshops. In addition, the project includes brief concerts by Musikene soloists and groups in Onkologikoa, under the title of Musical Capsules.

INVISIBLE BEAUTY

Invisible Beauty is a social project developed by the AI DŌ PROJECT Contemporary Dance Company, aimed at people with Alzheimer’s disease. Created by AFAGI —Asociación de Familiares y Amigos de Personas con Alzheimer y otras demencias de Gipuzkoa (Association of Family Members and Friends of Persons with Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias of Gipuzkoa)—, it was started in collaboration with Dantzagunea, a service promoted by the Regional Government of Gipuzkoa to boost the processes of learning and creation in dance. In 2017, Musikene joined the initiative by facilitating the use of its premises and contributing live music to the workshops. The dancer and choreographer Iker Arrue is the director of this activity, which uses contemporary dance as a tool. Thanks to this project, the students, in addition to receiving an education in values, develop specific skills in working with these people.