Favela Brass

Filming with Lonelyleap Productions

Favela Brass will soon be featured in a 2-minute video clip for a major technology company, the main character in which will be budding trumpet player Gabriela.

The production company tasked with making the video, New York-based Lonelyleap Productions, came to the favela to film all day on Monday and yesterday. Filming involved all of the older children and lots of people from the community as well.

Although filming was a long process, the children really enjoyed the experience and there were a lot of laughs along the way.

The main classroom of the project was transformed for the filming and the changes that they made look great, so we’re keeping them – bonus!

Perhaps the most gratifying part was that when time came to actually make music, the kids played out of their skins – showing absolutely no signs of being fazed by the presence of all the cameras, microphones, lights and film crew.

Thank you to Lonelyleap and the major technology company (to be revealed at a later date) for choosing our project and thank you to the children and community for helping to make the filming such a success.

A special thank you also to Sister Regina for letting us use the football court at the Centro Assunção-Cenam at short notice and also to Claudio at ABCD restaurant for letting us use the restaurant as a filming location at the last minute.

We are all looking forward very much to seeing the video now!!

Happy 2nd Birthday Favela Brass!

Yesterday we celebrated 2 years of the Favela Brass project with a party at local restaurant ABCD.

As well as letting us use their space and providing food for the children, restaurant ABCD secretly created a cake especially for the occasion (thank you Dona Maria and Mariane!)

Following a cracking show by the children, we also had samba band Samba de Lei to keep the party going into the night!

Big thanks to Claudio and all of the staff at restaurant ABCD, Samba de Lei, and to everyone who has helped make our first two years of existence a success – congratulations team Favela Brass!

Thank you Roman Sielert!

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!

Thank you John Ellis and the Doncaster Youth Jazz Association!

Thank you so much to John Ellis and the Doncaster Youth Jazz Association for raising money for Favela Brass at their Christmas event at the Earl of Doncaster hotel on Sunday. We really appreciate the generosity of all who kindly contributed to the collection, which came to a total of £342 in the end!

It was wonderful to see the Jazz Association thriving, with band after band of talented youngsters playing to a packed auditorium. Congratulations to all involved and also to Dennis Rollins on his appointment as the new musical director of DYJO.

British and Commonwealth Society Christmas Lunch

On Saturday afternoon Favela Brass played at the Christmas Lunch of the
British and Commonwealth Society of Rio de Janeiro. The children played excellently and the show was well received by the 170 guests present at the event.

As well as being a great day out for the children and opportunity to publicise the project, the BCS donated the funds raised from the event to Favela Brass. This money, combined with the further money that we raised by selling T-shirts at the event came to a total of R$5,680 – a great achievement and a much-appreciated boost to our finances as we enter the final phase of our preparations in the run-up to the Olympic period.

Thank you so much to the British and Commonwealth Society for inviting us to play at their Christmas lunch and for donating the proceeds of the event to us. We are also very grateful to BCS members Alison Correa, Victoria Staniforth and Anna Whyte for coming to visit our lessons in the favela in the run up to the event. Happy holidays to you all from everyone at Favela Brass!

Olympic Demo Video

Today Favela Brass submitted our application to play on the cultural stages that will be set up around Rio de Janeiro during the Olympic period. In support of that application we put together the following demo, showing the various rhythms and styles that the children can play:

Fingers crossed!

Teesside University School of Science & Engineering Donation

A big thank you to Dr. Paul W Shelton, Assistant Dean of Student Engagement, Employability & Business Partnerships, and his students at the School of Science & Engineering of Teesside University, who have donated the proceeds of their Enterprise Week fundraising activities to Favela Brass and the Ichthyosis Support Group.

We are very grateful for their donation of £550, which will go a long way to helping us to continue our activities. Here is the video that the students produced to promote their on-campus coffee delivery service: t’ u!

Thank you ever so much guys!!

Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra + Favela Brass

Here it is! The moment when the children of Favela Brass played together with the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra at ABCD restaurant in favela Pereirão!

The Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra are a world famous ska band from Japan, who are currently on tour in Brazil. They decided that during their trip to Rio de Janeiro they would visit the Favela Brass project, and not only do a workshop and concert with the children but also donate a trumpet, two melodicas and TSPO T-shirts. The concert and workshop happened in our local restaurant ABCD and was a huge success – as you can hear from the video above, the bands sounded great playing together!

Another great piece of news is that the TSPO will return to Rio for the Olympics next year and have asked us to play a show with them – our first confirmed show at the Olympics! So not only does Favela Brass link the Rio 2016 olympics with London 2012 – we now have a link with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics as well!

Thank you ever so much to the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra for such a special day at our project and for our new instruments and T-shirts. We look forward to seeing you next year at the Olympics!

Thank you also to restaurant ABCD for hosting the event and providing food and drinks for the children for free.

Visit from Annaelis De Jong and Codarts Students

Yesterday we received a visit from Annaelis De Jong, head of the Latin Music Department at Rotterdam Conservatory (Codarts) along with students Diogo Carvalho, Mose Franssen, Klara Gallardo, Fernando Camas and Pablo Rodriguez. As well as helping with the lessons, the group brought with them 6 melodicas and a set of drum sticks, bought with money donated by the teachers at Codarts. Both drum sticks and melodicas are essential items for our children to have at home to practice on, so this will mean even more music learning going on outside of lessons.

We are very grateful to Annaelis and all who gave the money to make this donation possible and really appreciate the group coming to get to know our project. Favela Brass already has a strong connection with Codarts because two of our volunteer teachers studied there – trombone player and violinist Sigrún K. Jónsdóttir gave lessons here for 3 months earlier in the year and percussionist Roman Sielert is giving lessons here at the moment. It was really great to deepen that connection with this visit.

Thanks guys!

New Olympic Promotional Video

Favela Brass has a new promotional video, all about our desire to play at the Rio Olympics in 2016:

The video was created by London-based Canadian documentary maker Alex Kryszkiewicz (Ostia! Media). Alex has been filming the project as part of his forthcoming documentary, titled “Discovering Ginga“, and used his footage and interviews to create the video for us without charge.

To get our own promotional video done to such a high standard would otherwise have cost us an absolute arm and a leg, so for Alex to take the time to do this for free constitutes a massive donation to the project. Thank you ever so much Alex and best of luck with the documentary!

Bindu Mathur