Global Partnership Leads to Cosmic Collaboration

 
The Ensemble seeks to connect and inform all people who are committed to ensemble music education for youth empowerment and social change.

Global Partnership Leads to Cosmic Collaboration

10-02-2024

Ensemble readers will remember that our June editorialist, El Sistema USA Director Elizabeth Moulthrop, brought us news of a new music education curriculum: a joint project between the Polaris Dawn space mission and El Sistema USA.

A few short months later, that partnership dramatically widened—into a concert connecting dozens of earthly youth musicians with a violinist in outer space! On September 13, 2024, astronaut Sarah Gillis played a piece by John Williams while floating inside her spacecraft nine hundred miles above the earth. She was accompanied by musicians from six youth orchestras on four continents: Venezuela’s El Sistema, Brazil’s NEOJIBA, Uganda’s Brass for Africa, Sweden’s Dream Orchestra, BLUME Haiti, and the Boston String Academy in the U.S, along with Los Angeles Philharmonic musicians conducted by Jeri Lynne Johnson. The concert was a fundraiser for the Harmony of Resilience project, a partnership between El Sistema USA, Polaris Dawn, and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. Learn more at ESUSA’s website and at PolarisProgram.com.