“Bichofonia Concertante – Opus Formiguinha”: a show that promises to bring music to children by the hand of theater always with great humor and thanks to a set of musical fables where it doesn´t lack a portrait of the human condition
The Cine-Teatro de Alcobaça – João d’Oliva Monteiro receives the next day July 24, Sunday, at 11:00a.m., a performance by Companhia de Música Teatral (CMT) specially dedicated to children: “Bichofonia Concertante – Opus Formiguinha” is an event integrated at the same time in the main program of Cistermúsica 2011 and in the section Junior and Families, promising to delight the younger ones. Created by Paulo Maria Rodrigues and Helena Rodrigues, CMT has the intention to develop projects within the aesthetic designation of “scenic music” and “musical theater,” focusing on music as a starting point for interaction between various techniques, languages and possibilities of artistic communication. The CMT has developed a pioneering work linking academic research, artistic production, technological creation, community involvement and dissemination of the importance of musical experience in earlier ages, particularly through a close relationship with the ideas of Edwin Gordon’s musical learning theory.
“Bichofonia Concertante – Opus Formiguinha” is a music theater show which presents a set of musical fables, some of which were published in the Encyclopedia of Music with Bug. Human stories that wear animal skin, with the lives of animals as an excuse for scathing criticism and an baffling reflection about human nature. “Bichofonia Concertante” invades different musical territories, shaking the classical tradition in a series of successive frames with great color and fine literary irony in a musical performance with image projection and movement. A scenic piano, double bass, percussion and three singers are the basis for an exercise of subtle and gradual deconstruction of stereotypical ideas about music, their agents and their subjects.
The show was born out of a metamorphosis of the project “Grande Bichofonia” previously presented by CMT, which involved the training of teachers of music by exposing them to innovative practices. Kind of pocket version of this great project that motivated music teachers to reveal themselves as artists for their students, at Casa do Artista in Lisbon and Casa da Música in Porto, the stories with music that compose this work have been received with joy and vivacity by children from kindergartens and elementary schools throughout the country, but also by adults, who recognize in the little bugs musical universe the catalog and subtle irony of the human condition.
