‘Fiddle Meeting’ brings hundreds of young music students together at MNAC

Around 400 students from 26 schools played bowed string instruments at Catalonia’s National Art Museum (MNAC) on last Sunday, in an event known as the 'Fiddle Meeting' (‘Trobada Fiddle’ in Catalan).

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this is the first time it has been able to take place since 2018.

The pandemic also meant that, unlike previous years, the concert was divided into two sessions.

Catalan professors,  and artists, and experts on non-classical string instruments, led the concerts. These included Oriol Saña, professor at the Catalonia College of Music (ESMUC), as well as artists from the Barcelona Fiddle Congress, such as Orial Català, Maria San Miguel, Galen Fraser, and Asier Suberbiola.

160 students of various ages and levels performed a joint piece in the museum’s Oval Hall.

Saña described the event, jointly organized by ESMUC and the Catalan Association of Music Schools (ACEM), as a “total success”, despite the smaller number of students compared to previous years, as it allowed for much of the region’s musical and educational community to unite.

Saña also defends that the work done by teachers helping the students with the pieces is valued. “We try to play non-classical music with stringed instruments”, he explains., “Wwe make a proposal of subjects and in September we give the sheet music to the schools that want to participate”.

On November 7, the teachers that organized the event, together with the teachers from participant schools, took part in an educational activity at the ESMUC called Let’s Fiddle (Fiddelitzem-nos), with the aim of preparing the repertoire that the boys and girls would play in last Sunday’s concert.

The “Fiddle Meeting” forms part of the Barcelona Fiddle Congress, an event that is due to take place from July 1 to July 3, after 2021’s edition was canceled due to the pandemic.