Monday, 24 October, 3.00, p.m., 
Igreja de São João Evangelista (Colégio - Funchal) 

The Village of C-E-G 
(storytelling for children) 
Inês Machado, organ 
Sofia Maul, narrator 

The Village of C-E-G (storytelling for children)

The idea of publishing a book and CD for children arose as part of my Master’s degree project, which focused on improvisation. In order to deepen knowledge of this performance art, the improvisation teacher, António Esteireiro, suggested that I began to improvise on well-known melodies. After improvising on one, two, three melodies, I thought “Why not write a story with music that can demonstrate the instrument in a more attractive way?” I chose a child to be the author of the story. I thought of a great friend, a “brother”, Renato Gonçalves, an adolescent of 14 years of age. The melodies were also chosen by Renato. As for the music, the characters in the story all have a characteristic tone that allows the various sounds of the instrument to be demonstrated. The improvisations are based on the method Breaking Free by Jeffrey Brilhart and will explore different improvisatory techniques. The book and CD A Aldeia de Dó Mi Sol is intended for children from 6 to 13 years of age; for children who are beginning to study music, I aim to show some techniques of improvisation, stimulating curiosity about the exploration of sound objects. For children who have not yet begun to study music, I intend, within the context of play, to demonstrate the instrument, awakening an interest in possibly learning to play it.

Inês Machado

Inês Machado

Born in Fátima, Inês Machado began her studies at eight years of age, in the organ class of Margarida Oliveira, at the Music Conservatory of Ourém. At the Higher School of Music in Lisbon she graduated in music, and then pursued a Master’s in the teaching of music (specializing in organ) under the supervision of João Vaz. She participated in a number of masterclasses with personalities both from Portugal and abroad, such as António Esteireiro, Bernard Foccroulle, José Luis González Uriol, Javier Artigas, Franz Josef Stoiber, Mauricio Croci, Pieter Van Dijk and Frank Van Wijk. She has performed as a soloist and as an ensemble musician all over Portugal, notably in the International Organ Festival of Oporto and Greater Oporto, and in the concerts for six organs in the Basilica of the National Palace of Mafra. In January 2016 she published her first children’s book with a CD entitled The Village of C-E-G. She is currently professor of organ and the Music Conservatory of Ourém and Fátima, and titular organist of the Parish Church of Fátima.

Sofia Maul

Born in Madeira on 16 November 1973, she has been a translator since 1974, a speech therapist since 2000, a mother since 2009, listener to stories forever, storyteller since 1975, and has been a member, since 2006, of the Contabandistas, a group extremely active in the promotion of storytellers and of oral narration as a form of contemporary performance art. Since 2004 she has been one of the group of storytellers of the Municipal Library of Oeiras, where she has given several courses as part of the Histórias de Ida e Volta project. Other activities of significance for her professional trajectory were the clown, mime and travel workshops she gave to be listened to and recounted (Ireland, Spain, United Kingdom, Italy and Belgium). She says that what drives her as a storyteller is “hearing and reading and writing and devising and sharing stories in order to built up a repertoire in order to travel to hear more stories...”. In September 2016 she organized, with the Xarabanda Musical and Cultural Association, the first festival of oral narration in Madeira – EVA, Era uma Vez no Atlântico (Once upon a time in the Atlantic) –, part of a network of festivals on the Atlantic seaboard which includes the Atlantica in Galicia, Terra Incógnita in Lisbon, Conto Contigo na Praia on Terceira and Rencontres de l’Imaginaire in Brittany. She says that her stories come from far and near, but those that she most likes to share come from the small island in the middle of the Atlantic to which she has returned after some years of living elsewhere, in order to be with her family and friends and to tell and collect stories.