There are mornings when Monterrey's heat comes before anything else. But last Monday, in the courtyard of the Guadalupe Chapa Duran Primary School, something else came first: music. Fundación Música que Humaniza presented The Treasure of the Great with the Toxic Brass, a metal quintet, and the artistic mediation of Fernando Guajardo, to hundreds of students who received the program with an energy that no thermometer could measure.
For just over 40 minutes, the repertoire led the students by some of the largest names in music history: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Bizet, Offenbach and Rossini. But in the hands of Fernando Guajardo, these names ceased to be dates in a book to become stories, musical forms, sounds that students could recognize and feel as their own. The program not only presented works; it presented ways to listen.
The moment that best summarized it came with the Bizet Torer Choir. Fernando invited the students to join, and the voices soon appeared. The quintet played, and the yard sang. Few things say more about what a school concert can achieve than that moment when children stop being spectators to become part of the music. That it was just Bizet. — a 19th century composer — The one who achieved that in a primary school yard on Monday morning says something important about the validity of the classic repertoire when it presents itself well.
But there was another time, perhaps more spontaneous, that is also worth counting. When one of the members of the Toxic Brass made his entry, several students spread their hands looking to hit her as she passed. A small, but very eloquent gesture: it was not the reaction of an audience intimidated by classical music, but that of one who already felt that that musician was someone close, someone who was worth connecting with. At that moment, the distance between composer and student — between Bizet and a primary school child in Monterrey — it was reduced to the palm of one hand.
That, in the end, is what you're looking for. The Treasure of the Great: not to impress, but to approach. Put Bach, Mozart, Rossini within reach of those who still don't know that music belongs to them, too. And on Monday morning, in a primary school yard under the Regiomontano sun, he did it.
