On Friday we said goodbye to our German volunteer percussion teacher Roman Sielert.

On face value, a European teaching Brazilian percussion to Brazilian children may seem unusual, but it’s hard to imagine a better candidate for the job than Roman – he plays and understands Brazilian percussion to such a high level that he could easily work as professional percussionist in Rio, he speaks Portuguese fluently, and most importantly he gets on great with kids.

During his 3 months at the project Roman both worked alongside our permanent Brazilian percussion teacher, Mangueirinha, in large group percussion lessons and also gave private and small-group percussion lessons. He also helped out with a million things outside of the lessons, from lugging keyboards up the hill to playing snare drum at our performances.

Roman is now back in Germany and today auditions for the chance to return to Brazil (São Paulo, unfortunately for us) to further his studies of Brazilian percussion at a university there.

Roman, we thank you ever so much for all your help over the past three months and are rooting for you in the audition today.

Um grande abraço e volte logo!