The Reina Sofía School and Redeia Bring Live Classical Music to Rural Spain

• They seal a collaboration to democratize access to classical music in remote and sparsely populated environments with a tour of recitals and virtual reality workshops
• The concerts, performed by students of the school, will be held in historical or emblematic buildings in four towns with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants

Madrid, October 3, 2023.- The Reina Sofía School of Music and Redeia have signed a collaboration agreement to bring the School’s music to towns in rural Spain where access to culture, and classical music in particular, is more limited and complicated.

The collaboration consists of an annual tour of free recitals by students of the School in four municipalities in remote and depopulated areas – of between 500 and 5,000 inhabitants. The concerts will be held in historical or emblematic buildings and the performers will introduce the works with prior explanations, to optimize the enjoyment and appreciation of the music. In this way, the inhabitants enjoy the talent of the young musicians who are trained at the school and, in turn, the career and employability of the students is boosted by enabling them to perform outside conventional cultural circuits.

The tour will include virtual reality workshops thanks to an immersive experience created by the Reina Sofía School that allows the participant to discover the work of great composers by traveling from the stage of an orchestra concert to the workshop of a luthier, passing through a palace in Venice and other landscapes and virtual environments. In addition, a musicologist and educator contextualizes the pieces and relates the music to the emotions: Mozart and joy, Tchaikovsky and sadness or Respighi and surprise, among others.

Paloma O’Shea, president of the Reina Sofía School of Music, and Beatriz Corredor, president of Redeia, have sealed the agreement. In the words of Paloma O’Shea: “Since the beginning of the School, one of our objectives has been to bring music to everyone. And this involves sharing the talent of our students in the great national and international concert halls, but also in those places where they do not have the conditions to enjoy these artistic experiences on a regular basis.”

Beatriz Corredor adds: “Redeia is firmly committed to equal opportunities and the development of rural areas, where we deploy most of our infrastructures. We believe that living in sparsely populated Spain does not have to be synonymous with enjoying fewer rights or opportunities. With this tour, we bring top-level classical music to locations where it does not usually reach and we favor that the population of rural environments access culture, education and leisure in equal conditions.”