From an statistical point of view, musicians constitute one of the main groups with a risk to develop labour illnesses. Nevertheless, that issue has not been neither sufficiently understood nor treated by the pedagogues, health professionals, legislators or politicians. In addition, musicians do not appear to be well sensitised in order to call for instruction and help to sustain and optimise their physical and psychical condition in regard to their profession.

Even though, like in other countries, we have made important advances in some of the areas devoted to the musician's health promotion, these advances concern primarily the research and treatment of musicians illnesses. But, on the other hand, advances in the field of prevention continue to be very limited.

That provably happens because prevention demands an active role of both pedagogues and musicians, who should be aware of the risks related to the music profession. Regrettably, musicians become receptive for that kind of issues only when they suffer from any kind of disturbance preventing them to perform their profession partially or totally. But, usually, musicians are not aware of the risks their profession entails or they do not have the necessary resources to prevent them. In addition, in some cases it is suitable to speak of a "mistuning" between the artists' and the medical world. Very often, professional jealousy contributes to make difficult their mutual understanding slowing down advances in the area of prevention.

No matter which causes it, the frequency of musicians illnesses has undoubtedly increased. Furthermore, there is no question that the prevention and treatment of illnesses must necessary include the joint efforts of pedagogues, musicians, medical professionals, and last but not least, the work of politicians.

In this spirit we felt encouraged to take the challenge of organizing an international meeting on promotion of musicians health. We aimed to bring together musicians, pedagogues, health professionals, insurance companies and jurisprudents in order to obtain each ones point of view and experience.

We firmly believe that the topics of discussion represent widely the contemporary problems in the promotion of musicians health. We are fortunate to have the participation of internationally recognized professionals in each of the selected areas. In addition, Terrassa and Barcelona, two cities with special charm and an important cultural, artistic and human heritage, offer a perfect frame for a forum of high international level.

Because all the reasons above-mentioned, we can only encourage all those who feel attracted by the mission of enhancing musicians' life quality to join us in this congress.

See you soon; fins aviat.