The Bendada Music Festival
Bringing life to a rural community with music teaching and performance

This past Thursday, January 24, PAPS joined the event celebrating the third year of the Bendada Music Festival, a cultural entrepreneurship programme set up by one of our members, pianist Inês Andrade.

Inês organized “The Bendada Music Festival: A Celebration of Music & Cultural Entrepreneurship” – a presentation and discussion event that took place at the Boston University’s Booth Theater.

The Bendada Music Festival is a week-long international music summer program that takes place in the village of Bendada, in the Beira Alta region, Portugal. The Festival includes masterclasses, individual lessons, and chamber music coachings, as well as performances in multiple concert halls and scenic outdoor locations, not only in the village of Bendada but also in other towns and cities in Portugal’s Beiras region. This coming summer will be its fourth year!

“I always knew I wanted to do more with music than just perform concerts,I wanted to create something that could make an impact on a whole community.”
– Inês Andrade (Bostonia Magazine)

A pianist with a Doctorate in Musical Arts from Boston University (BU), Inês put her passion for music and her ancestral hometown into an educational and cultural project. Together with her fellow pianist Edoardo Carpenedo, and other BU alumni, she started the Bendada Music Festival as a means to provide an intensive music program for student musicians, while bringing energy and cultural activity to an otherwise rapidly depopulating region of Portugal. Every year, several international professional musicians, experienced in various instruments and singing, travel to Bendada to teach young Music students from Portugal and abroad, providing them with music instruction and performance opportunities. Students and Faculty perform together in nearby towns and all over Bendada—in the mountains, in the village square, at a retirement home.

The community of Bendada, a village with a strong musical tradition, enthusiastically welcomes the musicians and their performances, gathering together to enjoy and participate in the festivities. The students and visitors also have the chance to visit the surrounding historic castles, museums, and the breathtaking landscape.

The Festival attracted the attention of several newspapers, radios, and national TV networks. The Festival has also been visited by the Portuguese Secretary of State for Tourism, Ana Mendes Godinho. As the interior of Portugal has been facing an intense depopulation for the past 50 years, this project serves as an example of how to bring back life to rural communities through music and culture, increasing tourism and boosting local economy.

“Bendada is a case study that everyone in Portugal should be looking at.”
-Ana Mendes Godinho, Secretary of State for Tourism (Bostonia Magazine)

In Boston, the event at the Booth Theater featured the screening of a documentary produced by Jason Kimball and Devin Hahn for BU Today and Bostonia (Boston University’s magazine and online newspaper), as well as a speech by the Consul-General of Portugal in Boston, João Fins do Lago, and a panel discussion moderated by Wendy Swart Grossman (lecturer of Cultural Entrepreneurship at BU Met), featuring BU’s College of Fine Arts Dean Harvey Young, Ian Mashiter (Managing Director of the BUild Lab), and Doug DeNatale (Interim Director of the Arts Administration Program).

We are inspired by Inês’s work and give her our best wishes for all of her professional endeavors.

We hope that the Bendada Music Festival continues to grow even more, so more people can visit the region and join the festivities.

You can find more details on their website: bendadamusicfestival.com

 

Text by Inês Andrade & Nuno Martins

Photos: Copyright © 2019 Rhythmic Minds, LDA. All rights reserved.