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Embracing the Unexpected

Daniel Trahey, Founder/Director, Collective Conservatory & OrchKids, Baltimore, MD

05-05-2020

It’s built into our DNA to think, plan, and act towards the future. Your brain is wired to do amazing things, right at this moment.

Just-Launched Collective Conservatory is Bold Pandemic Response

05-05-2020

The just-launched Collective Conservatory is a bold response to the pandemic crisis. Describing it as “Immersive Online Music Education,” founder Daniel Trahey and a faculty of established teaching artists, wellness advisors, and volunteer cultural ambassadors deliver holistic, customized, music-centered programs to partner organizations over the Internet. Read this issue’s Guest Perspectives column on this page to learn more from Daniel Trahey.

Online Learning In Denver Deepens Relationships

El Sistema Colorado Staff and Teaching Artists

04-07-2020

As words like pandemic, quarantine, and social distancing enter our daily vocabulary, El Sistema–inspired programs everywhere are asking the same question: How do we continue making music in the midst of COVID-19? El Sistema Colorado, like so many other organizations, went online.

The 2020 El Sistema USA Symposium & Seminario

Patrick Scafidi, Managing Editor, The Ensemble and The World Ensemble Newsletters

03-03-2020

Long before I joined The Ensemble newsletters editorial team a few months ago, I knew about El Sistema. I had read about it, listened to interviews, spoken with people inside the movement. But I hadn’t lived it—had barely seen it up close. I grew up playing jazz and orchestral pieces, but my professional background is as an editor, not a music educator. So I arrived in Durham for the 2020 El Sistema USA Symposium and Seminario expecting to listen to a language I barely understood.

YOLA National Festival Accepting Applications

01-07-2020

Applications are now open for the YOLA National Festival. The 2020 Festival will feature a Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra, which now expands to woodwind, brass, and percussion musicians age 12-14. Application deadline is February 3, 2020. Click here for more information on audition requirements.

Editorial: January 2020

Karen Zorn, President, Longy School of Music of Bard College, Cambridge, MA

01-07-2020

At the start of every New Year, I look for inspiration, and this week I found it. “It (Still) Takes a Village,” Krystle Ford’s article also in this issue, reports on the work of the Indianapolis Symphony’s Metropolitan Youth Orchestra, which seeks to engage multiple generations of family members in its El Sistema work.

The Global Leaders Plant a Musical Seed in Tlaxcala, Mexico

Raul Vergara, Cofounder and International Programs Director, Global Leaders Program

10-02-2019

Tlaxcala, located in the heart of Mexico, is one of the states with the greatest cultural activism in the country. In fact, it is a referent at the national level in terms of student participation of musical programs, a process inspired by the Venezuelan model “El Sistema”, which was first implemented in Tlaxcala 30 years ago. Within this process, the role of Casa de Música (Music Home)—an initiative of the Tlaxcalan Institute of Culture—has been very important, allowing for thousands the opportunity to approach a musical instrument through the different venues offered by the state.

EDITORIAL: The Transformative Power of Big

Eric Booth, Publisher of The World Ensemble

09-02-2019

I have been lucky enough to attend the last three gatherings of the global Sistema’s biggest events—Side by Side by El Sistema Sweden, Sistema Europe Youth Orchestra, and the YOLA National Festival.  There is no getting around it—these are gigantically complex efforts to design and manage, and they are expensive.

Boston String Academy Joins Orquestra Geração

Marielisa and Mariesther Alvarez, Boston String Academy Co-Directors

09-02-2019

“Visiting Portugal with my BSA orchestra was a trip full of memories that will never stop coming back to me. It’s amazing how, despite the expected language barrier, there were no walls between us, like we didn’t need words to form friendships because the music and the passion connecting us was enough. The music is the center of it all – why we were there, why we knew each other, why we would see each other days after the trip. It’s incredible how when you love something, you don’t want to stop doing it. After spending almost eight hours playing, barely awake by the end of the day, I still wanted to wake up and do it all over again the next day because I enjoy music; I enjoy playing it, the feeling and the togetherness of the orchestra, the people I meet, the places I get to see, the pieces I get to play, the emotion I get to feel, the memories that are present forever like friendly ghosts haunting my mind, traveling wherever I go, bringing it all with me. I may be in Boston, or in L.A., or in Venezuela, or anywhere in the world, but as long as I have music, and all that comes with it, Portugal will never leave me. It changed me far too much for me to forget.”

FROM THE EDITOR September 2019

Tricia Tunstall

09-01-2019

On November 1, 2011, Eric Booth and I published the first issue of The Ensemble newsletter. In my inaugural editorial column, I quoted our Venezuelan friend Rodrigo Guerrero, who had said at the first gathering of U.S. Sistema practitioners: “Look around you. Look to your right. Look to your left. These are the people who are going to help you. Networking is incredibly important.”

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