Rene Solis (MBA 1958) is director of Musica en Mexico, a performing arts information service in Mexico City. In this interview he talks about how the group grew out of a personal mission to today serving a wide community of interest.

“I have been a business man most of my professional life. And I have always been a music fan.

“We got together one day to see what we could do in the form of a cultural activity on a digital platform.

The main idea that came up was, what is going on in classical music in Mexico, and why do people not attend these different concerts more frequently? We finally agreed that the main reason is that people do not know about this. We realized that there were over 100 concerts of classical music in the metropolitan area every month, and they are not advertised in newspapers.

“So we started to contact the main organizations that organize concerts in Mexico. And we designed a good platform, a good site that would attract people, and we sent it out thinking that it may have a small reception.

“The very first mail-out, we had 300 people. We then decided to continue with this and then to amplify, not just billboard information of, let's say, the concerts of today, but to do it on a daily basis and to have it 365 days a year. Last year, we had over one million page views. And our Facebook has over 55,000 people who like it. And many of the messages that we send out, some of them reach 200,000 people. [Editor's note: The website is now over three million views.]

“But then this led us into other things. We wanted to say, well, many people do not know what classical music is. So why don't we go into what is classical music? Who are the main composers throughout history? Who are the principal performers today, and historically and so on?

“Principally, here we have a problem of what to do to get more people interested in the cultural expression of such a great importance as music, which is completely unpolitical and is available to everyone for free. And we want to share that with as many people as possible.”

(Published October 2019)

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