On October 7th, BSAS organised a special event which revolved around the theme of music. The aim of our meeting was to understand the role of music in our lives and, above all, how music can communicate as a form of art.
To do it in a better way, we have invited two special guests, both coming from the music world but at the same time from two types of music.
The first one was Federico Sacchi, A&R (Artist and Repertoire) Senior Manager of Sony Music Entertainment Italy, while the second one Wilson Hermanto, Teatro alla Scala music conductor. There was also another guest, professor Andrea Rurale, invited as a mediator of the conference.
The main topic of our meeting was the role of music in our current society, considered as a tool to spread messages, and in fact, our guests helped us to understand how music manages to do that.
Federico Sacchi started by introducing his role in Sony. As an A&R Senior Manager, his job basically consists in finding new talent and recruit them if they are considered valuable and talented. At a first glance, it may sound easy, but it’s actually not easy at all because you both need to have a good knowledge of the market and a gift of intuition for finding real talent. To succeed in this kind of work you first have to know what is around you, the current trend and the target of your search. You should also need to have a good eye and intuition to understand who could climb the ranking and who instead couldn’t.
Nowadays music is used more and more to convey messages which usually are social messages. People want to make their voice heard, and they manage to do it with music. However, these music messages are not completely decided by the artist himself because they first are filtered by the company which sign them. It’s also true though that, thanks to all the current technologies, everyone can spread his own message in one way or another.
Nevertheless, as Sacchi explains, the music sector is the most significant one to spread his message because music can give real voice to our thoughts, just by turning them into writing.
In the last few years it has become more usual to find young people using music to express themselves. The big insecurities are indeed well explained, for example, with hip-hop or rap music which is very popular among young people.
Another perspective though was given by Wilson Hermanto who is, instead, a specialist in classical music.
He started by giving an account of his life and then by explaining how he began to become passionate about classical music. Just with his excitement he managed to let us understand how live music can be really communicative and make us feel something special that no other media can do.
He focused his attention particularly on the aspect that nowadays music is accessible to everyone thanks to all the different platforms, as Spotify or Apple Music. However, he emphasised that at home you can’t experience the same energy you can feel by listening to live music.
He thinks everyone has his own task in life, and his role is to share his knowledge and experience in order to let anyone aware of the importance of music in ordinary life.
By listening to the opinions of the two professionals, we reinforced our view that is essential. Music, in particular, is a form of art that allows us to experience it in a personal way, having different impressions and interpretations of the pieces we listen to.
– Maria Beatrice Vagliasindi
BOCCONI STUDENTS ARTS SOCIETY 
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