Music connects generations I Music workshop in Pasewalk

The Philharmonic in Szczecin together with the City of Pasewalk (Stadt Pasewalk) and the Music Association in Pasewalk (Musikverein Pasewalk e.V.) is implementing the project "Senior ON. Cross-border training in access to online culture ”. Its aim is not only to popularize the ability to use the cultural offer on the Internet among older inhabitants of the Euroregion Pomerania, but also – through meetings of young people with seniors – to initiate intergenerational cooperation and information exchange.

The creators of the project assigned a special role in building bridges over generations to a universal medium – music.The High Five Brass chamber ensemble will take the participants of the workshops in Pasewalk into the world of wind instrument sounds.

The meeting program includes the following pieces:

Sonata „Bänkelsängerlieder” – Daniel Speer
„Three Masking Ayres” – John Adson
„Three Sea Sketches” (cz. 3) – Ian McDonald
„Die lustige Witwe” (potpourri) – Franz Lehár
Mexican Folk Medley

High Five Brass is the longest operating chamber ensemble of the Philharmonic in Szczecin and the only one of its kind in the city. Its repertoire includes Renaissance dance forms, compositions from the Baroque and Romantic period, 20th century music, including jazz and film music. The quintet takes part in festivals, radio broadcasts and educational projects.

The High Five Brass team consists of:
Marcin Olkowski – trumpet
Sławomir Kuszwara – trumpet
Dawid Kostrzewa – French horn
Wojciech Bublej – trombone
Tomasz Zienkowicz – tube

The project "Senior ON. Cross-border training in the field of online access to culture ”is co-financed by the European Union from the European Regional Development Fund and the state budget (Small Projects Fund under the Interreg VA Cooperation Program Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania / Brandenburg / Poland in the Pomerania Euroregion).

Why the project "Senior ON. Cross-border training on access to online culture ”so important?

In front of our eyes, the multi-generational families are passing into the past, young people meet their elders (grandparents, great-grandparents) less and less often, and generations close together in peer groups.
In traditional cultures, where oral communication played a key role, seniors were treated as a repository of knowledge. As a result of changes driven by the rapid development of information technology, the generation balance has shaken dangerously: there is no older generation in the world today who knows what children know.

The American anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote about the possible occurrence of such phenomena over 60 years ago. The researcher divided cultures into three types: post-figurative, cofigurative and prefigurative. The pre-figurative culture (sometimes called the "mysterious children's culture"; younger generations pass on technical knowledge to older ones), which Mead considered the song of the distant future, is now the dominant culture. The types of cultures characteristic of traditional communities had already disappeared or are disappearing: post-figurative ("culture of invaluable ancestors"; transmission of knowledge and cultural patterns takes place from older to younger) and cofigurative ("culture of rediscovered peers", in which cultural patterns of both generations intertwine) . In the retreat, the book culture (and the related monopoly of adult literate knowledge) has been dominant since the 16th century, and the "Gutenberg galaxy", understood as a collection of knowledge preserved in the form of print, is disintegrating. These phenomena have various consequences, including social ones, and the fronts of disputes run according to the dates of birth. Today, young and old, more and more strangers to each other, living in a certain isolation from each other, knowing little about each other, and cooperating even less frequently. Stereotypes become difficult to overcome and generational egocentrisms arise. By engaging in intergenerational dialogue, the project "Senior ON, cross-border training in access to online culture" fits beautifully into the Aging Well program, which emphasizes the importance of lifelong learning and breaking down generational barriers.