This month of June, specifically on Saturday the 21st, Music Day is celebrated. An opportunity to recognize its great protagonists: professional musicians, whose hobby is their work. One luck. But also a risk, since, with daily rehearsals of up to 8 hours, they sometimes endure sound levels of up to 100 decibels a day. This dynamic can cause some hearing disorder in half of them, according to data from a study carried out by the Hearing Prevention Observatory for Musicians (OPAM). For this reason, Intercomarcal Mutual, PREVINT (Intercomarcal Mutual Prevention Society), UMusic and the Higher School of Music of Catalonia (ESMUC)have organized for this Friday, June 20, the Safe Concert, a pioneering initiative that seeks to improve the hearing health of musicians through the way the members of the orchestra are distributed.
According to a study carried out by OPAM, the traditional arrangement of an orchestra can cause hearing damage to the musicians who make it up. In this sense, the report reveals that the wind section is the one that receives the highest acoustic impact. The position of the director is also detrimental, because despite being very far from the parts with the greatest impact, he is also one of the figures that receives the greatest acoustic pressure. In fact, according to the authors of the work, 80 decibels is the maximum value to which musicians can be exposed so that there is no hearing risk in the medium and long term, but wind instruments and the orchestra conductor are well above 90 dB.
It will be precisely on the occasion of the so-called Safe Concert when the provision that is considered healthiest for musicians will be revealed. The appointment is in Kursaal Theater of Manresa starting at 9 p.m., and the protagonists will be the Symphonic Camerata of l’Esmuc and the recognized Quartet Casals. The concert will be coordinated by Xavier Puig and it will be interpreted Symphony no. 94 in G major (the surprise) of Haydn i the Symphony no. 40 in G minor of Mozart. The event will feature the participation as presenter of Marcel Gorgori, Program Director In Clau de Vi from TV3
Apart from the awareness that will accompany this concert, the organizers insist on the issue of rehearsals, pointing out that the musicians, in order not to have hearing problems, should not spend more than 30 minutes playing, although the majority of them rehearse for about 2, 5 hours a day.