A JOURNEY “FROM SOUND... TO THE HEART” FOR PREGNANT WOMEN AND BABIES

It's never too late to start liking music or to get to know the Basque National Orchestra, but from now on we could also say that it's never to early to do it either. This Saturday, 26 February, at the Basque Orchestra Headquarters in Miramon, the Family Concerts cycle brings a groundbreaking event, a meeting with music tailored specially for pregnant women and babies under nine months, entitled "From sound to the heart."

Departing from silence, the musicians and music therapists Carles Pérez Collado and Andreu Ubach propose a journey transporting mums and babies into a world of vibration, rhythm and sensations connecting them to the cycles of nature and the beating of their own hearts. Creation and improvisation set around the possibilities offered by Baschet instruments and active participation of the attendees will be key to development of the concert.

Baschet's educational instrumentarium comprises fourteen sound structures including percussion, string and crystal. The creation of this new family of instruments stemmed from the acoustic principle discovered in 1952 by brothers François and Bernard Baschet, one a sculptor and the other an engineer. The wealth and variety of the sounds extracted from the metal interior of the Baschet sound structures offer a highly unusual look at the phenomenon of sound and music serving to develop the imagination, curiosity and musical expression.

Apart from its value in the field of music education, the Baschet instrumentarium is enormously pleasing to the eye. Thus, these structures, not unlike musical sculptures, with colourful forms which could easily come from a Miró painting or a Calder mobile, have enjoyed exhibition at the Barbican Centre in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Reina Sofía Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid.

Tickets for this first concert for pregnant women and babies under nine months organised by the Basque National Orchestra's Music Room sold out in days. This experience will be repeated at the Teatro Principal in Vitoria on March 27 as part of the Family Concerts given in the city in coproduction with Vitoria City Council.