B-ME: Blending Melodies: Bridging Cultural Identities

ABOUT THE PROJECT

The B-ME: Blending Melodies: Bridging Cultural Identities was implemented by Sistema Cyprus, El Sistema Greece and the Associação das Orquestras Sinfónicas Juveniles Sistema Portugal and was co-funded by the European Union. 

The project paired local composers with musicians from a refugee or migrant background to co-create original musical compositions that bridge the different cultural identities. These compositions were performed by the partners’ youth orchestras and are available for any other orchestras in the world. Through awareness raising concerts in the partners’ countries and beyond, B-ME intended to highlight the value of cultural diversity.

Through this project we offered the opportunity to musicians who have a refugee or migratory background to work with composers from their current community and co-create music compositions that bilaterally blend the sounds of their origins. Each pair had the freedom in the creative process that allowed the composing partners to fully express their intimate music identity. The students of the partner organizations, who belong to these vulnerable groups, had the opportunity to learn through music workshops and later prepared and performed these compositions in concerts. By opening these concerts to the general public we gave people the opportunity to see these children and these composer musicians from a different perspective and enable their understanding of other cultures through music. 

Finally, other composers and university students studying music and composition had the opportunity to attend seminars focusing on the objective of promoting social equity through music. 

Orchestras in Europe and anywhere else in the world are invited to perform these compositions in their own countries.