In August, the beautiful canals in the center of Amsterdam (Netherlands) host the annually returning Canal Festival
(Grachtenfestival), a ten-day festival of classical music and the cultural highlight of the Amsterdam summer. I am proud to announce my good friend and fellow musician Fabián Galli will be among the participants. On August 13, at the Orlyplein, (12.30 pm), he’ll present PercussionParty with Maikel Claessens, Yordi Petit, and the marimba-ensembles of the International School Amsterdam.
I met Fabián years ago, in his home town of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I studied piano at the national conservatory of music. As a 
musician from the Netherlands, I was used to having access to any amount of grand pianos for practicing and assumed innocently that would be the case anywhere else in the world. Fabián kindly shared his piano with me when I was without one, and thus became my friend for life. Over the years, we collaborated on multiple musical projects, and met in various places from Argentina to Alaska and many points in between.
Since 2002 Fabián works as a music teacher at the International School of Amsterdam (ISA). Besides holding degrees in piano, flute, choral direction and music education, he is a certified Orff music teacher and a faculty member of the World Music Drumming (WMD), a curriculum that is being taught in over 20,000 schools worldwide as well as in community outreach programs and venues. Fabián has added the World Music Drumming curriculum into his teaching at ISA and, inspired by his involvement with the WMD workshop, he started a Marimba Band in Amsterdam, the first one of its kind in Europe.