The Catalonia College of Music (Esmuc) is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a wide-ranging program of activities throughout the academic year. One example is the concert by the Esmuc Early Music Ensemble, conducted by Jordi Savall, at L'Auditori this Tuesday at 7 p.m. Esmuc's Director General, Núria Sempere, welcomed ARA to her office to discuss the anniversary, milestones, challenges, and ongoing efforts. A teacher at heart, she couldn't resist using a whiteboard to organize data, such as the 1,129 students enrolled in the 2024-2025 academic year, distributed among undergraduate (660), master's (403), continuing education (48), and Esmuc Junior (18) programs. Fifty-one percent of the students are from Catalonia, 29% from Spain, 7% from the European Union, and 12% from outside the EU.

Baroque concert (1974), the fascinating novel by Cuban author Alejo Carpentier, is the spark that ignited the imagination of musician David Albet, founder of the ensemble BCN216 and professor at Esmuc. "Four or five years ago, I rediscovered the book in a friend's library. I reread it and felt the urge to create a stage-musical piece, using early music as a pretext, a journey with time jumps from 18th-century Venice to Wagner, Louis Armstrong, and an electronic piece." The spark spread. The first to receive the call was set designer Pol Roig, who happened to be in Venice, the city where Carpentier imagined an encounter between Vivaldi, Handel, and Scarlatti. "I had just visited Vivaldi's Ospedale della Pietà," recalls Roig, marveling at the coincidence. As the idea began to take shape, musician Dani Espasa, director of the ensemble Vísperas de Arnadí, quickly joined the project. "I see myself reflected a lot in the book, and it's full of musical references," Espasa explains.

The music industry is in turmoil. Dozens of students have taken to the streets to demand an end to impunity for the abuse of power exercised by some teachers. It was the turn of a guitar teacher who was removed from the Liceu Conservatory after being reported to have groped a student, a case that has progressed. The Newspaper.In recent years, the world of culture has experienced a change in the way it establishes relationships between students and teachers, especially after the Institut del Teatre case broke out. This is now the case of the Catalan School of Music (Esmuc). When the ARA newspaper published its report on the Institut del Teatre, the director, Núria Sempere, wrote to nearly 2,500 graduates of the school to find out if they had experienced similar situations. "At that time, 11 people wrote to us and told us what they had suffered. Situations of abuse of power and situations that could be classified as harassment. Whoever tells you there aren't cases is lying," explains Sempere from Paris.