“There’s always a great effort behind all musical success stories”

Rosalía, Joan Ma­grané, Sílvia Pérez Cruz, Raquel García-Tomás, Clara Peya, Sal­vador So­bral, Gemma Humet, Arnau Tordera (Obese), Xavier Sabata and Marco Mezquida are just 10 of the 2,500 mu­si­cians who have emerged from the class­rooms of the Ad­vanced School of Music of Cat­alo­nia (Esmuc) in the 20 years of its his­tory.

What did the cre­ation of Esmuc mean 20 years ago?

It meant equal treat­ment of all types of music for the first time. Prior to that mo­ment, there had only been a de­gree in clas­si­cal music, not in jazz, mod­ern, fla­menco or tra­di­tional music. When Esmuc came along it com­pletely broke with these hi­er­ar­chies and al­lowed every­one to have a taste of every­thing. Esmuc is a school with a fully in­clu­sive cur­ricu­lum, in the sense that we are not just in­stru­men­tal­ists or com­posers, but all stu­dents end up with a cur­ricu­lum that in­cludes all dif­fer­ent vi­sions. It’s nice, then, to hear Joan Ma­grané say that if he hadn’t done early music with us, his com­po­si­tional work would prob­a­bly not be like it is, or Rosalía say­ing that her view of the pro­fes­sional world would be very dif­fer­ent with­out hav­ing taken sub­jects in pro­duc­tion and man­age­ment.

The world has changed a lot since then.

Yes, that’s why we must be re­cep­tive to the ten­sions of the 21st cen­tury. The most de­mand­ing thing is to po­si­tion artis­tic and pro­fes­sional ex­cel­lence along­side so­cial com­mit­ment. This is Esmuc’s pri­mary aim and also that of all Eu­ro­pean music schools that are pro­vid­ing higher ed­u­ca­tion. We can no longer con­tinue to look­ing in­ward. We need to start look­ing out­wards and to make sure that our grad­u­ates are able to trans­form a world that needs pro­fes­sion­als who can un­der­stand it.

How would you de­scribe Esmuc stu­dents?

In terms of train­ing, some 60% have stud­ied in con­ser­va­to­ries and the other 40% in music schools or non-reg­u­lated music in­sti­tu­tions. In terms of ori­gin, 58% of un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dents are from Cat­alo­nia, 36% from the rest of Spain, 4% from the Eu­ro­pean Union and 2% from the rest of the world. There is one el­e­ment to work on, how­ever, both in Esmuc and in other cen­tres, which is a gen­der bal­ance.

For ex­am­ple?

Pro­duc­tion and man­age­ment and ped­a­gogy are very equal in terms of gen­der. In­ter­pre­ta­tion of clas­si­cal and con­tem­po­rary music, or early music, too. Mu­si­col­ogy, on the other hand, is very fe­male bi­ased, with 70% fe­male stu­dents. Whereas jazz and mod­ern music, con­duct­ing, sound en­gi­neer­ing, fla­menco and tra­di­tional music are very male dom­i­nated sub­jects. Over­all, how­ever, the num­bers are at 60-40, be­cause most stud­ies are fairly equal.

There will be no more women con­duc­tors, or com­posers, or sound en­gi­neers, if these per­cent­ages are not re­versed.

Yes, in fact we’re cur­rently analysing a ques­tion from a sur­vey that re­ported how be­fore higher ed­u­ca­tion there was a lot of par­ity and the prob­lem was tak­ing the next step. The per­cent­ages of men and women who take our en­trance exam are very sim­i­lar, as are those who go on to pass it. The prob­lem, how­ever, is that be­fore get­ting to that point, many girls de­cide not to pur­sue higher ed­u­ca­tion be­cause of this image that says that con­duct­ing, or com­po­si­tion, or elec­tric bass, are for men. We’ve no­ticed that many back out and opt for other ca­reers. That’s why, with our Year 10 and 11 stu­dents in sec­ondary we started a men­tor­ing ac­tiv­ity in schools and con­ser­va­to­ries. You have to tell them, “I did the ac­cess exams and passed. Don’t be afraid, be­cause it is pos­si­ble, and I am the proof.”

What are the per­cent­ages among teach­ers?

It’s ter­ri­ble, 80% men and 20% women... But I can’t do any­thing about it. It is taken into ac­count and we try to re­verse it when there are se­lec­tion processes, but on equal terms. That is, if there are two equal can­di­dates, we opt for a fe­male teacher.

Which de­grees are most in-de­mand?

The most pop­u­lar are jazz and mod­ern music. For a place on the de­gree in singing we have 50 ap­pli­cants, for ex­am­ple. These are things we need to re­think, but I don’t think it’s worth­while in­creas­ing the num­ber of places just be­cause there’s de­mand. How­ever, we are re­view­ing the global num­bers with the ed­u­ca­tion de­part­ment, so that there is less pres­sure on the 600 places we offer. It’s the same num­ber as in 2001, when there were six mil­lion of us in Cat­alo­nia. There are now seven and a half, so we will have to see if we can in­crease the num­ber of places. It’s not just a de­mo­graphic issue, but a ge­o­graph­i­cal one as well.

A new ‘tal­ent show’ on TV3 will be ded­i­cated to find­ing “the best anony­mous voices in Cat­alo­nia to make them stars”. It seems that to be­come a star, all you need to do is win a con­test.

Yes, it’s an­noy­ing, be­cause there’s al­ways a great ef­fort be­hind all mu­si­cal suc­cess sto­ries. There’s knowl­edge, which is some­times for­mal and some­times in­for­mal. I wouldn’t want to judge the sources of knowl­edge, but there’s al­ways a lot of work be­hind it.

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