Cultural Management
Various texts on pedagogy, education and politics
Alongside her career as a singer, Catarina Molder has done considerable work as an artistic director and cultural manager on artistic projects that have a pedagogical focus, disseminating erudite music, in its more lay and eclectic sense, to a wide range of audiences. This work has been particularly intense on the Descobrir educational project (formerly known as Descobrir a Música) at Fundação Gulbenkian, which Catarina Molder has devised and directed since the 2005-06 season and where every year she creates a set of activities that are thematically and organically linked to music, its workings, development and multiple effects. Each season involves visits that explore the music itself, something that occurs year on year as part of the repertoire, while the workshops explore music using other forms of artistic expression, such as dance (its age-old companion), drama, video-art, fine art, creative writing, etc.
She has also created a number of shows from scratch, which saw her initial investment bringing a significant return with many of the shows becoming a set of productions that would be staged annually. At the same time, she has founded the Companhia de Ópera do Castelo, which is unique in Portugal as it boasts a modern and flexible vision that contrasts with the staid and costly tradition of the lyrical world, launching innovative projects for audiences of the present and future that combine opera with other musical forms.
As a great exponent of erudite music, she has also created the book/CD project with the illustrator Danuta Woytschakowska and pianist Francisco Sassetti, for the Leya publishing house "Vamos cantar os clássicos" (Let's Sing the Classics), which showcases erudite song from Schubert to contemporary pieces in Portuguese, so they can be understood and sung by a younger audience.
She has written various texts for the Pais e Filhos magazine on aspects of pedagogy related to the world of sound, hearing and music. She has a critical and active view in society that leads to sporadic political intervention when the need arises and her motto is: "More action and fewer words, because words are blown away with the wind.". "What is important is action, achievement and results that are not exclusively measureable in numbers because numbers undermine the quality of work". "Major change is not just technological but in changes in attitude, because attitude everything".