New sounds in city by the sea

Music is at the heart of Valencia, Spain's third-largest city. For hundreds of years, people in and around the city have formed symphonic brass bands. Children grow up learning to dance the jota and boleros and to play works by Mozart and Stravinsky, with flamenco coursing through their veins as well.

Bordering the Mediterranean on Spain's east coast, Valencia has long been the nexus of Western, African, Hispanic and South American cultures, the various musical traditions blending with the local.

In recent years, this city of about 800,000 has had an infusion of fresh sounds with the establishment, in 2011, of the first international campus of the Berklee College of Music in Boston. The campus set up state-of-the-art facilities in Santiago Calatrava's soaring City of Arts and Sciences complex. It was a marriage made in music heaven.