Program

3 Ukrainian Folk Songs – Carlos Garcia featuring Maria Yanchyk (Ucrânia)

Batuque-me – Mário Laginha featuring Edvânia Moreno (Cabo-Verde)

Suite Estancia Op.8 – 1st mov. “Los trabajadores Agrícolas” – Alberto Ginastera 

Hino à Juventude, last part of 4th mov. of 4th Symphony, Op. 16 – Joly Braga Santos 

Danzón n°2 – Arturo Márquez

Bio 

©Carlos Porfírio

Orquestra Geração

The Orquestra Geração/Sistema Portugal is a social inclusion project through orchestral music, whose mission is to promote the full development of children and young people, contributing to their personal, social, and academic development. Created in 2007, in a joint partnership between the Artistic School of Music of the National Conservatory (EAMCN), the Municipal Council of Amadora, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, it expanded in 2008/2009 and 2010/2011 to more municipalities in the Lisbon metropolitan area and also to Coimbra, predominantly intervening in more disadvantaged environments with fewer opportunities, advocating for access to culture and music education for all as an essential asset to the construction of a fairer and more dignified society, in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Currently, under the pedagogical supervision of EMCN and administrative oversight of the Association of Youth Symphony Orchestras Sistema Portugal (AOSJSP), it develops orchestral nuclei and a jazz nucleus distributed among 22 schools in 18 clusters in the Lisbon metropolitan area, with the support of the Ministry of Education and respective municipalities (Almada, Amadora, Lisbon, Loures, Oeiras, and Sesimbra); with the Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Lisboa; in Coimbra, in partnership with the Conservatório de Música de Coimbra; in Castanheira de Pera, with the municipality. It involves more than 1200 children and young people in compulsory education, some of whom discover their musical vocation in the Orquestra Geração, continuing specialized music studies in national and foreign reference schools, with several having already completed their higher education, with master’s degrees in performance or teaching. Among them, six are already teaching in the Orquestra Geração, as well as in other schools; others have joined various orchestras, such as OCCO, JOP, Gustav Mahler Jugendeorchester, or the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra.

The AOSJSP also has projects in the kindergarten area (Orchestra of Affection), jazz, and world music, seeking to reach a wide range of audiences and meeting the cultural roots of the communities of origin of its participants because it is these same communities that it aims to involve in a more active participation in the training path of its young people, following the project’s motto – More than Music, We Play Lives. To date, 1700 children and young people aged 3 to 20 are part of the Orquestra Geração; over its existence, more than 5000 have had contact with music, contact that extends to many family units, in contexts completely rooted in orchestral practice.

The Orquestra Geração has also participated in various projects in partnership with other similar entities, namely with Cyprus, Greece, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Guinea-Bissau. The Orquestra Geração has received, among other notable distinctions, the Silver Medal of Merit from the Municipality of Amadora and the “Excellence in Education” award (Amadora). It was nominated as one of the best 50 social projects in the European Union in 2012 and 2014, and in 2018, it was awarded the Commemorative Gold Medal of the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the Portuguese Assembly of the Republic.

Sandra Martins, Viola

She began her musical studies at ARTAVE. In 1996, she entered the National Academy of Orchestra with Professor Paul Wakabayashi. From 2001 to 2003, she studied with Igor Soulyga in Oviedo.
She attended Masterclasses with Ana Bela Chaves, Igor Soulyga, Gerard Caussé, Barbara Friedhoff, Adam Smila.
She has been conducted by conductors such as León Spierer, Michael Zilm, Ernst Schelle, Vasco Azevedo, Jean Marc Burfin, among others.
She is a viola teacher and coordinator at Miguel Torga School and a board member of Orquestra Geração.
Between 2014 and 2022, she was a viola teacher at Escola Profissional Metropolitana.
Since September 2022, she has been a viola teacher at Academia de Música de Lisboa.
She has been a section leader for viola in the following orchestra internships: European Youth Orchestra, Vienna in 2014, Istanbul 2015, and Athens 2017; in the Xiquitsi project in Mozambique in 2015.
Since 2015, she has been conducting the GeraShare Orchestra, formerly the Geração Amadora Municipal Orchestra.
She has been a member of the Sinfonietta de Lisboa Orchestra for twenty years.
She is a founding member of the Camerata Alma Mater.