São Paulo – A music project and a city from Brazil are nominated for the Music Cities Awards (MCA) 2024, whose winners will be announced next Sunday (8) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Conexões Musicais, a music education program from the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra Foundation, is a finalist in the Best Initiative to Support the Development of Music Education and Careers category, and the city of Salvador, state of Bahia, is competing as Best Global Music City.
The MCA is an international competition established to recognize and award projects that use music to enhance the economic, social, environmental, and cultural development of cities. Along with the award ceremony, a convention will take place in Riyadh until December 10, featuring workshops, roundtables, masterclasses, and panels focused on the same theme as the competition–the development of cities through music.
Conexões Musicais is a social responsibility and cultural democratization project carried out by the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra in the municipalities it visits. Along with a series of orchestra performances in public spaces or local cultural centers of the cities, it offers music studies, education, and awareness, particularly in public schools. The program has already engaged over nine thousand students in 38 Brazilian cities. A total of 103 educational concerts have been held as part of the project.
The vice president of the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra Foundation, Ana Flávia Cabral Souza Leite, will represent the institution at the awards ceremony in Riyadh, where the project is competing with initiatives from the United Kingdom and Australia. On the 9th, the vice president will give the lecture “Music Education and the Importance of Music in Schools” as part of the panel “Future Strategies for Music Education,” which will discuss innovative and successful models in music teaching.
Brazil’s Salvador: A musical city
The city of Salvador is competing for first place with London and Brampton, Canada. According to information released by the City Hall of Salvador in the announcement of the finalists, the international award aims to recognize the city that best integrates music as a tool for social, economic, and cultural development. Since 2016, the city in Bahia state has held the title of Creative City of Music from UNESCO, the United Nations’ education, scientific and cultural agency.
The effort for the award is led by the International Cooperation Office of the City Hall of Salvador in partnership with the Department of Culture of the Municipal Secretariat of Culture and Tourism. “The nomination reinforces the cultural strength of Bahia state’s capital city and the importance of music as a central pillar for local development and the internationalization of Salvador,” the head of the secretariat, Pedro Tourinho, was quoted as saying in a statement released at the time. Last year, Salvador was awarded the MCA 2023 in the “Best Musical Tourism Initiative” category for promoting tourism through music.
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