Learning Music by Listening to Music

If yesterday afternoon you had entered classroom 201, you would have witnessed a strange scene: two students stretching a newspaper copy and a drummer banging it with his percussion brushes. Or dozens of people clapping hands to tell beat from backbeat. Or a girl standing at the whiteboard trying to tell chord changes. None of them were crazy. They were attending a lesson. CLEACC students know it: Paolo Alderighi likes to enhance the History of Music course that he shares with Andrea Garavaglia with a concert lesson. He talks about melody, harmony, rhythm. And then he epitomizes them with his fingers running up and down a piano keyboard.

Christian Meyer banging a newspaper

A former Bocconi student and a highly respected jazz pianist, Alderighi was supported by Elio e le Storie Tese drummer Christian Meyer, who played a small bass drum he used at the Sanremo Festival 2013, and the brilliant clarinettist Alfredo Ferrario, with the occasional help of the American stride piano player Stephanie Trick, who's incidentally Alderighi's wife. They usually entertain club patrons as the Color Swing Trio. Yesterday they showed students styles and forms of jazz music and made them understand that there's a whole world of sounds beyond the latest pop star video that gets millions of views on YouTube.

"You cannot teach music without listening to it", says Alderighi, whose course deals with the connection between highbrow and lowbrow music. "A concert lesson is way more stimulating than a record playing on a stereo. It makes students aware of the human element behind the music. They discover the vastness of the world of sounds". CLEACC aims to integrate economic culture with general culture. "Having a taste of liberal arts education helps students to grow a better sensitivity. Italians have art in their DNA, but there's a huge music competence gap to fill".

In a world dominated by simple "I like" messages, Alderighi gives students the key to a deeper understanding of music. He's sure that "once you're aware that there's a structure behind a piece, you stop judging music in a subjective way". As Meyer passionately told CLEACC students, "the Italian cultural managers music incompetence is disheartening. One day you'll be those cultural managers. You'll lead private and public institutions. You'll be decision makers. If you'll be able to discern the good and bad in music, you'll do a better job".