CUWinds Costa Rica

The SINEM school in Desamparados is housed in a former concrete factory at the edge of a sprawling San Jose barrio and at the base of a mountain.  A dozen blocky buildings of varying sizes comprise the school. The buildings are being renovated, one by one, to serve the 500 music students of Desamparados.

Music spilled from each classroom space. Two hundred young violinists scratched their way through a rehearsal. The CU Winds broke up into insturmental groups and commenced their master classes.

Of all the schools visited so far, the school at Desamparados seemed to be delivering the most on the SINEM promise of bringing music to the masses.  The CU Winds met with students who were ready to learn. The classes were challenging and successful. Music from each small classroom created an almost deafening din. In this context, deafening is good. Deafening means that music is happening, that people are learning, demonstrating, and playing together.

At the end of the sessions, the CU winds climbed back into their bus, trading stories of their experiences. Tomorrow they would visit Desamparados again, to follow up on the promise of today.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.