The Academy that Jordi Savall set up to get the best instrumentalists to form the baroque orchestra for his Vivaldi project has brought together some twenty women who are no more than 39 years old and who already have experience as a freelance in various orchestras. But that in life they had had the opportunity to work in a similar environment.
Suddenly they had the freedom to talk to each other, during brief breaks in rehearsals, about certain topics that still remain silent in the third decade of the 21st century: experiences of sexual abuse and violence. And not only within the family, but also at work, which in his case points to the orchestras for which he works as a freelance.
Sabrina Chauris, one of the viola players in this project of The Four Seasons, explains how in this safe space that has been for them Le Concert des Nations Féminin was able to verify, speaking in petit committee with some colleagues, that in the last decade cases of rape by musicians in orchestras have continued to occur. Cases that, for the most part, go unreported.
“If your stalker or your rapist is in the same band, you won't find a space like this to talk. And working as a freelance and for a small orchestra is where you have the least chance of being able to report, because there is no institution. In an ensemble they play for a production and then everyone goes to their house. Maybe there are men who imagine that it is a propitious context to have this type of predatory behavior, because it is impossible to do anything about it ”, he affirms.
Settled in Catalonia for two years, this 38-year-old French girl is especially sensitive to this issue. At 36, she finally had the courage to denounce the sexual abuse she suffered as a child and adolescent by her brother, two and a half years older than her. And later, as a young girl, by the father of her daughter.
“It is beginning to be a less taboo subject, but there is violence within the world of music. And work as an artist demands your whole being, it requires the best of yourself, emotional and psychological stability. And if you have experienced sexual violence, which is the case for many – more than half of women have experienced it at some time in their lives, according to statistics – it is difficult to have confidence. You may not even be able to bear people looking at you." In her case, music, she says, has helped her a lot to overcome the trauma. “It is not just a therapy, it is a tool to build your life”.
For Chauris, not everyone is Jordi Savall, "in the human sense". “Activating a women-only project makes a powerful sense –she warns-, and hopefully the day will come when positive discrimination is no longer necessary. But Savall is also a very good person, I haven't met any conductor so kind, and he shows true fidelity to his musicians. That's why I felt like sharing with him this situation that occurs in the musical world. I wrote him a letter. And I almost cried when I gave it to him."
“This is not an issue that has affected us – Savall responds to questions from La Vanguardia – but I am aware that it occurs. For me it is a fundamental condition that the people in my orchestra are good people. I can't stand toxic people, I have a sixth sense and I distance myself from them. I am an emotional and sensitive being... despite being a man [smiles]. I have in a certain sense a very feminine sensibility too, because our language is very subtle, refined, and in life you cannot differentiate what you are as a musician from what you are as a person”, he concludes.
