INCLUSIVENESS
Starting with the 2021-22 Concert Season, the Orchestra UNIMI, whose activities are managed by the Fondazione UNIMI, has implemented a strategy of inclusion, cohesion and social permeation. This direction is part of the Third Mission activity of the University of Milan (UNIMI), which aims to foster the osmosis between the University and civil society, also having as an objective the encouragement of the University’s attendance through a cultural production activity offered to the population of the territory.
Thanks to new collaborations with institutions, associations and cooperatives (an aspect that the Orchestra cares a lot about) our activity has developed becoming more inclusive, realizing initiatives aimed at bringing together a new audience belonging to fragile social groups: the action is made possible precisely thanks to the social cohesion put in place by the above-mentioned entities. For this aspect, too, the management of our Project fits right into UNIMI’s policy, which is attentive to the need to ensure an inclusive academic environment marked by respect for differences, both inside and outside the university, especially in the “social peripheries.” In this direction, the Orchestra UNIMI has been moving in a number of directions:
- General rehearsals open to secondary school classes accompanied by their teachers. With this initiative, the UNIMI Orchestra reserves for those institutions, which first act in society in an inclusive and transversal way, the opportunity to participate in a moment dedicated to listening to the classical music repertoire. The UNIMI Orchestra’s desire is to welcome young alumni to our University and introduce them to the world of symphonic music by attending the last rehearsal before the evening concert: witnessing the fine-tuning work, which behind the scenes conductors, soloists and orchestral professors go through during a dress rehearsal, can better convey how a performance is not only the result of years of individual study, but also the capacity for balanced collaborative interaction among the musicians to return the infinite nuances that each score offers-all exemplary aptitudes for human and civic relations as well. We highlight that recently a group of adults with autism spectrum disorders, who are cared for by the Autism Center of the Social Cooperative – Spazio Aperto Servizi, also participated in the open rehearsals.
The open rehearsals take place at the Aula Magna of the University of Milan in Via Festa del Perdono 7.
Class participation in the open rehearsals is free of charge.
For information (booking arrangements, open rehearsal schedule) contact: orchestra@fondazioneunimi.com
The performance was very interesting especially for us in the music department. It was very nice to see all those instruments moving together as a big and valiant group of musicians!
- Collaboration with the SONG Association, which borrowing teaching principles from Claudio Abreu’s “El sistema” brings music, through small orchestral nuclei, where there is none, offering children and youth from all cultural and social backgrounds the opportunity to play and sing together in an inclusive and accessible way. Being able to interact in various ways with the very young musicians who make up the nuclei, i.e., the small children’s and youth orchestras present in the City and reporting to SONG, enriches with other nuances a social and educational action that we consider of primary importance. In concrete terms, the small orchestras stay close to our orchestral players during some rehearsals (we really mean close in the physical sense, on stage, in the ranks of the orchestra) and we will try to have them play, the more trained ones, with us: an experiment we are very keen on.
- Collaboration with Penny Wirton School: for each concert we reserve seats for the School’s students, migrants of all ages in great need, who learn Italian as a first step of integration. The students were accompanied by their teachers, all volunteers. In fact, we believe that integration is achieved not only by learning a language, finding a job, but also by participating in social and cultural life – music is a universal language that offers the opportunity to do this in a simple and immediate way.
- Collaboration with the Friends of the San Vittore Ship Association. La Nave is a ward of the San Vittore “F. Di Cataldo” prison. Coordinating with ASST Santi Carlo e Paolo of Milan, the Association is doing its best to continue supporting the care and treatment pathway that the inmate-patients of the Nave undertake “inside” the prison, even “outside.” In particular, the UNIMI Orchestra is carrying out a music project involving music lessons and chamber music concerts inside the Prison. This project takes on a special significance by converging in the Extraordinary Concert 2024 ( see next paragraph) in which the inmate-patients of the Nave, who are part of the Nave Choir, will be allowed to go out and participate as choristers in the Extraordinary Easter Concert 2024.
- Extraordinary Concert. The purposes of the Extraordinary Concerts, organized in the 2021-22 Season of the UNIMI Orchestra, are many. However, what we care most about is to create a moment of strong aggregation of the city community. In 2022 the Extraordinary Concert, in the Church of San Marco, was dedicated to some Milanese figures who have made the City grow; in 2023 it was an anticipation of the contribution that our Orchestra is making with Concert Season 2024 to the celebrations for the Centenary of the Athenaeum and was also an opportunity to promote a fundraiser in favor of the Doctors for Africa Association CUAMM. For 2024 we are returning to St. Mark’s Church, and the concert will be part of the Parish’s initiatives for Holy Week: we will pay tribute to two great composers on the centenary of their death, Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) and Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924). In addition to the participation of the UNIMI Orchestra itself, conducted by its music director Maestro Sebastiano Rolli, there will be two vocal soloists who are students of the Accademia di perfezionamento per cantanti lirici del Teatro alla Scala. For the choral part, multiple entities will participate: the UNIMI Choir (choirmaster Marco Berrini), formed by students, faculty and employees of the Statale; the San Vittore Ship Choir, formed by inmate-patients of San Vittore; and the San Vittore Ship Friends Choir (choirmaster Paolo Foschini), formed by former inmates/patients and volunteers of the Ship Friends Association; the Cremona Faculty of Musicology Choir (choirmaster Margherita Bellini), formed by students from the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage (Cremona) of the University of Pavia, realizing one of the collaborations we cherish with other universities. The Extraordinary Concert thus comes to stand as a summation of the constant work of contact, relationship and development of promotion and cultural, inclusive and civic initiatives that the UNIMI Orchestra carries out with other cultural institutions, through collaborations that it therefore tightens and cultivates in a continuous social and cultural growth by acting concretely on the territory.
Casa circondariale “F. Di Cataldo” Reparto La Nave
30 November 2023
Teofil Milenkovic violin – Solo violin
Johann Sebastian Bach, Sonata n. 1 per violino, BWV 1001
Fritz Kreisler, Recitativo e scherzo – Capriccio, Op. 6
Max Reger, Adagio n. 4 dalle Sonate per violino solo
Eugène Ysaye, Sonata per violino solo in re minore “Ballade”, Op. 27 n. 3
26 January 2024
Quartetto Noûs
Ekaterina Valiulina violin
Alberto Franchin violin
Sara Dambruoso viola
Riccardo Baldizzi cello
Franz Schubert, Quartetto per archi n. 14 in re minore, D. 810 “La morte e la fanciulla”
12 March 2024
Gabriele Carcano, piano – The piano and its repertoire – Concert Lecture
Music by Domenico Scarlatti, Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Schubert, Frederic Chopin, Claude Debussy
14 May 2024
Quartetto Goldberg
Jingzhi Zhang violin
Giacomo Lucato violin
Matilde Simionato viola
Martino Simionato cello
with Umberto Ruboni piano
Robert Schumann, Quintetto in mi bemolle maggiore per pianoforte e archi op. 44
