Educational Project

 Foco Musical is composed by professionals of music and music education. It runs an educational project which allows concretizing its philosophy towards music teaching

 From the pedagogic contents, concerts, recordings, conception of publishing material, to the music education promotion as a fundamental curricular field, Foco Musical is present in all these domains.

1. Children’s awareness towards erudite music of occidental tradition, through an approach that we believe to be more efficient in a school context. For the outcome of these goals, Foco Musical created its own orchestra – Orquestra Didática (Didactic Orchestra) – which allowed the creation and acquisition of repertoires and approaches to converge with the classroom interests, which are the starting point for a work that culminates in live participated listening moments;
2. Ensemble music practice, from Orff Schulwerke inspiration with a regular practical experience through percussion instruments and recorders joint with the vocal practice in small class orchestras;
3. Classroom music composing, in small groups, from the sound sources that the children start dominating with the ensemble practice.

The Complementary Actions allows us to work this entire program in a real project strategy. These are dynamic central moments conceptualized from the pedagogical goals of Foco Musical’s project, which means it comes from the classroom interests. Further than circumstantial events, they are rather pretexts to prepare, share and reflect in class context, assuming itself as the closing moment the specific domain they intend to serve. So, in the first domain, which respects to the audition references and the access to music as an art, the children of our partnership schools are able to participate in; Orquestra Didática concerts, twice a year, in a Playing-in-theAudience symphonic experience. Serving this same master line, the Ensembles of Orquestra Didática, visit the schools as String Quintet, Wind Quintet, Brass Quintet and Percussion Quartet, to promote a proximal approach with the orchestral instruments. For the second and third master lines – Ensemble Music Practice and Classroom Music Composing – Foco Musical produces every year recordings of the children’s groups, publishing their own works to the entire school community and families. This project also produces  a big festival where the final year pupils step the stage of one of the best known venues and show the community what each class can do, interpreting a piece integrally and exclusively played by them.