The pioneering initiative, fully booked within just two days, offers musical activities for families and expecting parents

Auditorio de Tenerife’s Coro Canguro (Kangaroo Chorus) began its first edition with 40 adults, some of whom are expecting, and 24 children from around a dozen of the island’s municipalities. This new project of the Educational and Social Affairs Department is an artistic and musical initiative for early childhood and involves instrumental music, body movement activities and vocals. Offered free of charge, the pioneering programme has met with such demand that it was filled to capacity after just two days.

Through a methodology designed by Grandes Oyentes, Coro Canguro gathers families, artists, and musicians from different genres. Based on the benefits of music, voice, movement and creation, Coro Canguro fosters a healthy environment of growth for the infants and their adults by encouraging creative and enjoyable experiences through structured sessions of choir singing, recording sessions, workshops and concerts that put the spotlight on artists and families.

The first session was held yesterday (Friday 26), during which the staff and participants got to know each other. The hall where the activities take place is adapted to meet the families’ needs, with carpeting and cushions, facilities for securing prams, changing rooms and adjacent halls in silence.

Art Director of the Auditorio de Tenerife José Luis Rivero welcomed the families to ‘this caring space for learning and nurturing through music’. He acknowledged the ‘eagerness of staff and participants to get started, as we’d never worked with young children of this particular age group’. He went on to speak highly of the ‘powerful theoretical applications underpinning this project, provided by our collaborators Grandes Oyentes’.

After a brief introduction of the participants, the professionals in charge of Grandes Oyentes, María Magdalena Sánchez and Yeray Ruiz, led the session with piano and voice, working with the children in pairs or individually and focussing at all times on interaction with the youngest of the children. After going over a few simple moves designed to build confidence, they turned to exercises with sounds and music in activities that make use of the entire body.

The programme is available to families (parents, caregivers and families) with children, from newborn infants to toddlers of up to two years of age, as it seeks to work with children who have not yet learned to walk, and to pregnant women who are expecting to give birth after the project’s last event (from December onwards). You needn’t be a musician, know how to sing or be musically skilled to take part in Coro Canguro.

The first edition of Coro Canguro Tenerife includes 10 work sessions held every Friday until 5 December, concluding with a final concert for artists and guest musicians in the Chamber Hall.

The Educational and Social Department of the Auditorio de Tenerife is associated with RESEO European Network for Opera, Dance and Music Education and the Spanish Network of Organisers of Educational Concerts (ROCE). The department was created to bring arts and creative processes to all citizens, with a particular focus on school pupils and people at risk of social exclusion.

One of the objectives is to nurture the relationship between artistic and cultural activities and how they are conveyed to society and to encourage space for building a relationship between art and people. Its main idea is for art to make an unquestionable contribution to social well-being, the recognition of individual and collective identity, training, and critical thinking needed for mature democratic social coexistence.