Silvia is Italian and arrived in Chile in 2016 to work for the company EDF (Électricité de France) and, in her words, she arrived “for work and stayed for love”. Until this year she was working as Director of Energy Storage Projects at EDF, but now she decided to focus her energies on being a professional coach and managing the Foundation. Felipe is a Chilean lawyer who developed his first years of career in the United States, where he studied at Duke University and worked in the import and export sector. Since 2015, he returned to Santiago to work in a law firm where he advises international companies that are doing business in Chile and is Legal Manager of the company Engineering and Construction Sigdo Koppers.
At Antenna, we are interested in learning about the interests and passions of our partners, so we had a conversation with them about their passion for music and the mission of their Foundation.
Philip: Incredible. Demand is high, although it's not easy to map it. What we do is we put everything online, the spaces that need a piano can apply and a selection committee decides which piano we can give them. A school, for example, doesn't need a concert piano. So that's how we identify the needs and assign the pianos. We don't donate the pianos, we deliver them as a gift with some minimum maintenance conditions. So we reserve the right to remove them if something happens or to make a change if the needs of the community change. Silvia: We currently have 35 pianos in the Foundation, of different brands and qualities. We have two in a place like the Municipal Theater, up to schools in very poor neighborhoods. A couple of weeks ago we handed over one of the last pianos we had in the warehouse to a foundation called Entre Olas, where they teach surfing, English and music to the children of Curanipe and Pelluhue.
Silvia: Each delivery has been special.Philip: Yoda himself gave us a piano. Frank Oz, who is the puppeteer behind Yoda and some of the Muppets, donated a piano that we took from the Flatiron District in New York, in perfect condition. Some time later, he contacted us to find out where his piano had been left and that's when we realized that he was a very famous person. We placed the piano in the Valdivia Chamber Orchestra, of which Roberto Fischer, a prominent Chilean/Swiss conductor, professor of orchestral conducting at the Musik Akademie in Basel, is the Music Director. Silvia: This is just one example of the connection that people have with pianos and their interest in knowing where they are going. Some donors accompany the pianos with cards addressed to the foundations that will receive them. Philip: To encourage this interest and cultivate those relationships, one of our plans is to put trackers on pianos so that people can know where their pianos are. Silvia: The first donation was to Renca, to the municipality. There it coincided with the start of the Pandemic so it was a bit complicated. The second one was in Puente Alto, I had to go alone and it was very exciting to see the enthusiasm with which they received the piano. We have delivered pianos in Frutillar, at the Teatro del Lago, in Panguipulli, at the Australis University in Puerto Montt. They were really well received and it was very exciting. Philip: We have two in La Pintana, in Pincoya, in Santiago Centro... In many communes. The most beautiful thing is to see how people play them and that transforms their relationship with music.
Philip: We want to travel more to New York and Miami to strengthen the Foundation there. Silvia: Now that I will have more time to dedicate to the Foundation, I have a lot of challenges. On the one hand, re-assembling the team because the executive manager left; improving the logistics chain and organizing events to disseminate the work we are doing and sensitize families to take their children to piano lessons. This is why we want to do concerts in the most vulnerable communes, the Mobile Theater, so that families can approach the piano and children can connect with music and awaken their desire to learn. Philip: We have very good ambassadors here and in the United States. Most of them are professional musicians who connect with our purpose. We want to add more collaborators.
Silvia: In the Antenna Community I have met people who have been interested in the Foundation and who collaborate with us. Antenna's members are very open and many like music, so it fits in very well with the Foundation's audience. Every time we talk to the Antenna community they connect. At the Patricia Ready Gallery we did a concert to benefit the Foundation and several partners attended to support us, that was very nice. In addition, this opportunity to share our project makes us very excited, hopefully we can inspire other couples to have a common project.
To learn more about the work of Notes For Growth, we invite you to visit their webpage
