Euphonium.com

I was fortunate enough to visit Bogota Colombia for the 2nd Colombia Tubas festival. This was a fun week course that was really focused on helping students of the euphonium and tuba in Colombia (and we had one student from Venezuela) excel at their playing skills. My thanks to the hosts of Freddy and Juan that made a great week. The interesting thing about this week was the participants that attended and the growth and development of the euphonium in Colombia. It has a very well developed wind band scene, but not many students study music professionally. The other really neat aspect was the location. While the last year’s festival took place in Bogota, this year, the festival was housed at a Catholic school about 40 minutes of the city proper in Chia. The school was also a convent for nuns and so it was GREAT fun to meet the nuns, perform for them and also learn some Spanish from the “Irmanas.”

As part of the week, we played concerts and recitals at the National Museum in Bogota as well as 2 concerts at the convent. The final concert was at a great university hall in Bogota. My also thanks to Patricio Cosentino, tubist from Buenos Aires for his hard work for the festival and the invitation to take part. I learned a lot of Spanish and was really enthused that even though my language skills were limited, the students were able to understand. Music is INDEED an international language. I look forward to returning to the festival in 2010 and hope many South American euphonium and tuba players choose to take part.