“It is exciting to see that we are going to sing” in front of thousands of people on the sidelines of Eurovision, enthuses Tessa Cajani, a young Swiss college girl of 13 years. Sixteen classes in Switzerland responded to the call of the project.
These classes of schoolchildren and college students participated this year in musical workshops, in partnership with Eurovision, to learn to compose a song, from the writing of the text to the musical accompaniment, to perform on May 15 on a secondary stage of the competition in Basel, two days before the grand final.
This workshop “made me want to go to school”, says Tessa, of the Cycle (College) of the Renard to Vernier, a town in the canton of Geneva, she said to AFP during a rehearsal.
Anaïs Carré, who teaches music there, is happy that two classes of the same establishment were selected: when the students “knew they could come, they were so happy, it was an explosion of joy”.
“I put myself in the place of the students saying to myself (that) it is a fantastic experience for them to be able to create a song to have a human experience like that, (…) to be really creative in school and to be masters of a project,” she said.
These workshops are organized in schools in partnership with the Swiss public audiovisual group SSR and the National Cooperative of Authors of SHEA Music, with professional musicians.
“If it can light a little spark a bit in some or some, you have to take it,” says Gaspard Sommer, artist and professional musician, who guides the students of Mrs. Carré.
There are only a few days left before the launch of the 2025 edition of Eurovision of the song, the largest musical competition broadcast live on television in the world, which Switzerland won the right to welcome after Nemo’s victory with “The Code” in Malmö in Sweden last year.
The students will “sing on a scene that can accommodate 6,000 people”, explains Mr. Sommer, during rehearsal at the fox cycle.
In the audience of the Tessa college, the students, seated on the ground or on chairs, sing in loop the text they imagined in February, “summer memories”.
-A piano gives the rhythm, tirelessly repeating the same catchphrase, until young people find the right melody, from a series of agreements.
– “Don’t leave without me” –
“We try to grant the lyrics of the song to rhythm,” slips Pilar Beatriz Calatras Camero, 13. Suddenly, nothing is going well, the piano notes are interrupted: “One of the stanzas does not have the same number of feet … You have to review the text”, explains Ms. Carré.
In a big hubbub, children discuss in small groups, make proposals, especially girls, and modify the text. “As a tank top facing the fan” becomes “and in my tank top against the fan”.
“It’s like improvisation. There is something a little mysterious, you have to let go and dare to start singing,” says Mr. Sommer.
He then makes them listen to synthesizer sounds. It is almost noon and exhaustion is felt. Difficult to choose electronic music that will replace the piano during the concert.
But the desire to sing is there.
“It doesn’t stress me at all to sing at all, it comes out alone. It’s a way of expressing myself. Since little one I wanted to sing in front of a lot of people. Suddenly … it’s a bit of a dream that will come true,” says Angelina Morisod, 12, who loves to sing Céline Dion titles, especially “do not start without me” with which the Canadian had won the competition in 1988, for Switzerland.
Lyandro Soares Dias, 13, already sees himself on stage. He is impatiently awaiting this moment of “unforgettable” sharing because it is one of the biggest European competitions, it’s like the Champions League but song, music, and I have been looking at this for little. “
And in addition, “it would be really incredible if we encountered stars,” he slips.
