Snow Pond Center for the Arts - Summer Concert Series

El Sistema, a Model for Music Education
Snow Pond Center for the Arts is
committed to making music as accessible
as possible in our community and we are
looking at successful models from around
the world, such as El Sistema.
The transformative power of music is
sweeping the world through the inspiration
of Venezuela’s revolutionary El Sistema.
Founded in Venezuela in 1975 by
Dr. Jose Antonio Abreu, El Sistema is a
tested model of how a music program can
both create great musicians and dramatically
change the life trajectory of needy
children, deeply benefitting youth from
all backgrounds who participate. It now
teaches music to more than 500,000 of
Venezuela’s most vulnerable children, and hundreds
of thousands more young people around the globe.
El Sistema is not a replicable program or pedagogy,
but an inquiry into the most effective ways to achieve
youth development goals through intensive investment
in the positive social impact of the ensemble.
In 2009 Dr. Abreu was awarded the TED prize for
founding, growing and developing the National System
of Youth and Children’s Orchestras and Choirs in
Venezuela. Here are excerpts from his remarks upon
accepting the award:
Since I was a boy, in my early childhood, I always
wanted to be a musician, and, thank God, I made it.
From my teachers, my family and my community, I
had all the necessary support to become a musician. All
my life I’ve dreamed that all Venezuelan children have
the same opportunity that I had. From that desire and
from my heart stemmed the idea to make music a deep
and global reality for my country.
From the very first rehearsal, I saw the bright
future ahead. … I had received a donation of 50 music
stands to be used by 100 boys in that rehearsal. When
I arrived at the rehearsal, only 11 kids had shown up,
and I said to myself, “Do I close the program or multiply
these kids?” I decided to face the challenge, and on
that same night, I promised those 11 children I’d turn
our orchestra into one of the leading orchestras in the
world. Two months ago, I remembered that promise I
made, when a distinguished English critic published an
article in the London Times, asking who could be the
winner of the Orchestra World Cup. He mentioned four
great world orchestras, and the fifth one was Venezuela’s
Youth Symphony Orchestra. Today we can say that
art in Latin America is no longer a monopoly of elites
and that it has become a social right, a right for all the
people.
In its essence, the orchestra and the choir are much
more than artistic structures. They are examples and
schools of social life, because to sing and to play together
means to intimately coexist toward perfection and
excellence, following a strict discipline of organization
and coordination in order to seek the harmonic interdependence
of voices and instruments. That’s how they
build a spirit of solidarity and fraternity among them,
develop their self-esteem and foster the ethical and aesthetical
values related to the music in all its senses. This
is why music is immensely important in the awakening
of sensibility, in the forging of values and in the training
of youngsters to teach other kids.
https://www.ted.com/talks/jose_abreu_on_kids_
transformed_by_music
http://www.elsistemausa.org/
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