Rome CIVIS Orchestra Academy 2025

The project seeks to establish an academic framework in the BIP format, in order to continue the first two CIVIS orchestra academies, held in Marseille (April 2022) and in Madrid (May 2023). The initiative will be led by Sapienza with the participation of CIVIS students and teachers from other partners. The main objective of this proposal is to perform a concert in Rome during the CIVIS days of June 2025, featuring CIVIS students from as many partner universities as possible, in order to show how a CIVIS community actually exists and can be made real through music, after a week of work together.

1. Playing music together and interact with students with other background and from different countries; the music will be performed with different conductors, from different universities.
2. Rehearsing with the whole orchestra, in order to prepare the final concert to be held on June 12th 2025.
3. The actual performance of the concert in Sapienza’s Main Hall with 4 conductors.

After having successfully completed the BIP, the students will ideally

• Understand how to perform two important works of the symphonic repertoire (Respighi’s “Pines of Rome” and Dvorak’s “New World Symphony”)
• Know how to integrate themselves in a collaborative, community based artistic project
• Develop a positive attitude towards this academic and cultural experience
• Be able to evaluate personal musical achievement
• Apply aesthetic and practical concepts in the creation and recreation of music
• Gain insight into the interrelationships among academic disciplines by studying how music reflects periods of history, music and art
• Value the achievement of bringing together more than 60 students and perform a common musical text in public
• Cultivate an international mentality through the collaboration with students and academics from other countries.
• Create bonds both with academics and other students, which may offer networking opportunities and further personal careers.

The main aspect of the physical mobility will be the rehearsals for the concert and the final concert. There will be 4 full days of rehearsals, from Sunday 8th to Wednesday 11th, from 9:00 to 13:00 (3.5 hours plus 30 mins break) and from 14:00 to 18:00 (again, 3.5 hours plus 30 mins break). Thursday 12th will have regular rehearsals in the morning (again from 9:00 to 13:00), then the dress rehearsals from 3pm to 5pm and finally the concert from 19:00 to 20:00.

The virtual component of the program will consist of six sessions, to be developed through Google Meet, which would be easily available. This will also be a good format to introduce musical scholarship together with musical performance issues in the BIP. In every session there would be additional material (texts, recordings...), and a final assessment activity.

A physical part and a virtual one will be combined right from the beginning:

• Personal study. There will be a first virtual session with the conductors, in order to guide students and explain the decisions that will determine the actual performance of the work.
• During the first weeks each student will prepare his or her part, subject to a personal follow-up in each university.
• Finally, students will have a virtual meeting to show their work and acquire important feedback. In this way, the work in Rome will not begin from scratch.

Motivation Letter

CV

The required CV must focus on the musical background of the applicant, by specifying the musical level (including possible academic degrees obtained or expected in a near future), the musical experiences (years of performance in orchestra, possible chamber music groups, ...) and any other element that allows the evaluation of the musical skill (possible awards in national/international music competitions, soloist performances, ...).

• Jose Maria Alvarez Muñoz (Univ. Autonoma de Madrid),
• Sébastien Boin (Aix-Marseille Université),
• Francesco Vizioli (Sapienza Univ.),
• Zoe Zeniodi (National Kapodistrian University of Athens)