Events/Performances

El Sistema Kenya (ESK) has just celebrated its fourth year of working with children in Nairobi. ESK currently has three staff members who handle program logistics and finances, and six teachers who teach violin, clarinet, flute, recorder, singing, and music theory. They are working with over 200 children in three different slums in Nairobi.

The symposiums I’ve attended in my professional career have run the gamut from too much academicism to too much mutual reinforcement among like-minded individuals. But neither was the case at the 2018 El Sistema USA (ESUSA) National Symposium, held during a surprisingly snowy January weekend on the campus of Duke University. There was certainly a prevalence of head-nodding among the nearly 200 attendees, but it was the kind of agreement that symbolized an eagerness to challenge and to improve.