The tiny state of Goa, India is experiencing “a choral and classical music revolution,” writes Daniel Allen in Thursday’s (5/3) South China Morning Post (Hong Kong). “The first Monte Music Festival was held … in 2002, with musicians, singers and an audience of locals and overseas visitors cramming themselves into [a church] and spilling out across the weed-strewn paving of the chapel courtyard. Taking place each year in early February, the Monte Festival is organized by the Fundação Oriente … dedicated to strengthening cultural ties between Portugal and its former colonies in the East.… The Child’s Play India Foundation, a Goan charity founded nearly a decade ago, [instructs] Panaji’s disadvantaged children in Western classical music…. The foundation … is the brainchild of [classical music lover Luis] Dias, a native of Panaji…. The Goa University Choir, founded five years ago [by] Argentinian-Italian orchestra conductor and composer Santiago Lusardi Girelli … has quickly gained a reputation for excellence…. Girelli is now overseeing the recovery of music from the archives of Old Goa’s churches, and has begun to train young Goan choir conductors. He has been instrumental in the creation of … a [new] music research and performance centre … in the village of Merces.”
Posted May 7, 2018
