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The Ensemble seeks to connect and inform all people who are committed to ensemble music education for youth empowerment and social change.
 
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Music for the Whole Community, One Backyard at a Time

Libby O’Neil, Co-Founder and Executive Director, East Lake Expression Engine

01-05-2021

East Lake Expression Engine (ELEE), which began in 2014, serves the East Lake neighborhood of Chattanooga, Tennessee. We usually serve 75 to 100 kids each semester. Our program meets in a church that is conveniently located between the elementary and middle schools that serve our neighborhood. East Lake is wonderfully walkable; our staff members walk to the elementary school to pick up our students there, and our middle and high school students walk to us. Several of our staff members live in the neighborhood. This has long provided us with daily opportunities for casual, neighborly relationships with our students’ families. During 2020, that proximity has been invaluable.

Road Tripping through Mexico with Linda and the Mockingbirds

Verenice Velazquez, Program Participant, Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy

12-02-2020

“Hey, Verenice! We are taking a bus with Linda to Sonora—we’d like you to join us with your fiddle.” I was in my third year at UC San Diego when Eugene Rodriguez, Founder and Director of Los Cenzontles, called me with an invitation to take a very special trip. Just a few months later, I was on a bus to Sonora, Mexico with Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, several Cenzontles, and many more family and friends, embarking on a musical journey that was filmed to create Linda and the Mockingbirds.

Codi’r To: El Sistema in Wales, and in Welsh

Carys Bowen, Coordinator, Sistema Cymru

12-02-2020

Codi’r To (Welsh for “raising the roof”) is a Welsh-language community project that delivers the world-renowned El Sistema program in areas of multiple deprivation in North Wales. Specifically, we seek to tackle disadvantage and educational underachievement in two communities of multiple deprivation. We hope to provide inspiration and transformation for children, families, schools, and communities, changing lives for the better through music.

Lullaby International

Tiffany Ortiz, Director, Early Childhood Programs, Carnegie Hall

12-02-2020

Through Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project, families work side by side with professional musicians to create and sing personal lullabies for their children. Parents create songs that are uniquely theirs, that reflect who they are as parents and what they hope to communicate or pass on to their children. Families often express the joys, fears, and stresses of parenting, but most of all, they share their hopes, dreams, and love for their children. Each lullaby is a gift, a reflection of parent creativity, love for our youngest ones, and our basic human need for meaningful connection.

The Influence of Music Education on Developing Children

Assal Habibi, Principal Investigator, Brain and Music Program, Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles; Beatriz Ilari, Department Chair, Music Teaching and Learning, USC

12-01-2020

The past two decades of psychological and neuroscientific research on music have provided robust evidence that learning to play music can support brain maturation and the development of cognitive and social skills in children and adolescents. Learning an instrument requires long hours of practice, focused attention, memory, and discipline; mastering one involves the continuous capacity to improve motor, auditory, and executive skills, and is likely to influence the differential development, maintenance, and function of certain brain structures and systems.

Black Voices in Classical Spaces

Garrett McQueen, Executive Director, TRILLOQUY

12-01-2020

When I’m asked about my experiences in classical music, I simply share my story. In sharing it, I both reaffirm for myself why I continue this type of advocacy work and relay a lived example of why that work must be done.

The International School of Music, Languages and Polytechnic Studies: A Longtime Dream Becomes Reality

Joseph Wasswa, Founder and CEO, IMLS

11-12-2020

Music can unite the world, produce unity and harmony in the community, and offer social and financial assurance. Having grown up humbly myself, I began dreaming in 2011 of starting an academic institution and cultural center for the young generation in my home area of Masaka, Uganda. That dream became the International School of Music, Languages and Polytechnic Studies (IMLS), located in the city of Masaka, near Lake Victoria.

El Sistema Venezuela: Academic Strategies in Times of Confinement

Eduardo Méndez, Executive Director, Fundamusical

11-04-2020

As the new school year takes off, we think it is a good moment to reach out to our friends in Sistema-inspired projects around the world, to share our experiences in teaching and caring for our kids throughout the months of quarantine.

The Toki School of Music: A Living Legacy in Rapa Nui

Kendall Grady, Global Leaders Program 2020 Cohort

11-04-2020

Rapa Nui, the most isolated inhabited place on earth, is the birthplace of the Rapanui people, who call their island “the navel of the world.” With deep, ancient roots, the island attempts to balance its past—including difficult recent memories of colonization in the 1860s—with its prosperous growth in the Western context. In this unique setting, music has played a pivotal role in building collaboration and coexistence between multiple cultures and lifestyles. In my opinion, no organization has embodied that balance more than the Toki School of Music, which celebrates its people’s authenticity in an increasingly modern world.

Canada Connects

Kathryn Cobbler, Teaching Artist, OrKidstra, Ottawa, Ontario; Jacquie McNulty, Site Manager, Youth Orchestra of Northern Alberta (YONA) – Sistema, Edmonton; Karma Tomm, Director, Sistema Kingston, Ontario

11-03-2020

As El Sistema-inspired programs, we value community. Over the years, programs of various shapes and sizes have sprung up across Canada, laying down roots in priority communities. Although each program is unique in how it strives to support the students and families it serves, we are united as El Sistema-inspired programs in our shared belief in the transformative power of music. We are also bound together in confronting issues that concern all Canadians—issues of income inequality, racism, and systemic oppression, to name a few.

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