Fifty young musicians from the Trás-os-Montes Generation Orchestra played in Paris at the Music Festival. Generation Orchestra is a project aimed to fight social exclusion through music and is supported by EDP Foundation.
They come from Mirandela, Murça and Amarante. They are teenagers, almost all of whom come from deprived families, and they arrived in Paris after a long wait at the airport. It’s cold, about to rain, and they’ve slept little over four hours. And yet, at the first signal from the conductor, they are transformed into near-professional musicians. The tourist tour can wait. They’re here to represent Portugal at the Paris Music Festival, and they’re playing three concerts over the course of the afternoon.
These young musicians’ international debut took place in the Portuguese Consulate, in Paris, on 21 June, in the context of an EDP initiative to promote Trás-os-Montes within the Portuguese community, and several local social institutions and entrepreneurs also participated.
Watch RTP’s documentary here
