The feedback that the Foco Musical’s music teachers, musicians of Lisbon Toy Orchestra, have had in the experiences shared with their students, regarding their debut program, lead to the conclusion that the comical timbre of the Toys has a tendency to generate appetite to get to know the original versions of the works presented, having immediately become a good excuse for small conversations about the great composers of the Western Music History. This pedagogical aspect that associates the literature issues, around the history of music, to creativity in musical conception far from the canons, is simultaneously a paradox and, who knows, a proposal for a paradigm. At least, data are released for a different approach to historical visits to great music, as well as to the way of creating music, now revisiting the concept of the first part of the debut repertoire. Let us say that it is a concept where we have in mind the fullness of the approach systematized in the acronyms CLASP. CLASP is a neologism that starts from a word that can mean anything that serves to fix, grab, aggregate or embrace – which is intended as significant learning – from which the initials were built for what can be understood as the systematization of everything that should be the concern of music education: Composition (creativity), Literature (theoretical basis), Audition (listening / acculturation), Skills (learning for live), Performance (musical interpretation / music practice). Lisbon Toy Orchestra, with its first program, proposes in this way to transform and stylize a classroom work process, synthesizing it in a stage performance format. The rest of the repertoire embraced by this orchestra follows in some way the same didactic principles.

Available repertoire by Lisbon Toy Orchestra:

  • From the body to the symphony orchestra (several authors);
  • The Circus of Eli, the Magician: an opera-circus (Jorge Salgueiro | Gonçalo M. Tavares);
  • Le Carnaval des Animaux and The Animalistic Suite (Camille Saint-Saëns | Jorge Salgueiro);
  • The Toys’ Christmas (traditional Christmas repertoire);
  • A Journey Throughout The Western Tonal Music History: the most famous opera arias and symphonic hits (several authors).