About CMT

CMT’s work strategies often involve participants in shared creative processes, based on the idea that artistic projects are, in essence, laboratories: spaces for artistic creation with musical roots, the study of human creation, the development of tools for human development.

We learn most and best in early childhood. Musical experience at the earliest age can contribute to the intellectual and emotional development of human beings. Some of CMT’s work has created educational spaces in which parents, educators and artists share artistic expression, rediscovering a space for communication through musical practice.

The articulation of CMT’s work with the academic agenda has given concrete form to the so-called “third purpose” of universities: to contribute to the cultural and socio-economic development of people, places and the country, collaborating in the development of a more inclusive and just society.

As well as our established partnerships with the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa and Universidade de Aveiro, Companhia Música Teatral has collaborated with almost all higher education institutions in Portugal. Internationally, presentations at the following academic institutions stand out:

– Harvard Graduate School of Education (USA)
– University of South Carolina (USA)
– McGill University (Canada)
– Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (Belgium)
– Universidade de Seville (Spain)
– Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Spain)
– Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil)
– Universidade de Brazil (Brazil)
– EEEG-Mannheim University (Germany)
– Knowledge Network Institute of Thailand (Thailand)
– Oslo Metropolitan University (Norway)
– KindKnow – Kindergarten Knowledge Centre for Systemic Research on Diversity and Sustainable Futures (Norway)
– Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) (Brazil)
– Universidade de São Paulo (USP) (Brazil)

Music contains a set of possibilities for very rewarding human experiences and has an intrinsic capacity to give people pleasure, whether as individuals or as part of a group. This dual state — to be both individual and related — is the key to social cooperation and is something that musical practice allows people to experience.

“Attunement” is not only a prerequisite for but also the general purpose of music. On a fragile and delicate planet, the experience of art can promote “attunement between people, birds and flowers”.  Rethinking the idea of “total art” requires a shift in thinking about the role of artists and the purpose of art, in light of the idea the music can be a tool for human development.

CMT’s artistic creations take diverse forms, a “kaleidoscope” that reflects the possibilities of crossovers between music and other artistic languages. Music’s intrinsic educational potential can be explored through participatory formats, allowing people to deconstruct and understand connected ideas, languages and materials.

A “constellation” is a poetic idea but also an analytic and objective view of an expansive system, with various “bodies” interacting with each other across “fields” of an aesthetic or conceptual nature.