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Takeaways from El Sistema Academy 2020: The Importance of Reflexivity, Fun, and the Dominant Seventh Chord

Patricia Abdelnour, former Deputy Director of Internal Relations for El Sistema Venezuela

03-04-2020

Every year, El Sistema Sweden organizes a three-day symposium, inviting great teachers from Sweden and elsewhere to share their experience and knowledge with an attendee group of music educators who work for social change. I had the joy of attending this year, and I’m still feeling excited about all the things I learned.

Ang Misyon: Continuing the Mission of Nurturing Young Filipino Talent

Jennifer Rivera, Partnerships and Communications Officer, Ang Misyon, Inc.

03-04-2020

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The World’s Youth Call for “Arts for Humanity”

Jeff M. Poulin, Managing Director, Creative Generation

03-04-2020

Sinai, Egypt is a fascinating place. Sitting between Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, it exists “where civilizations meet.” This theme echoed throughout the halls of the International Congress Center in Sharm El Sheikh last December during the World Youth Forum.

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.

Guest Perspective

Liam Barnstead, student, Soundscapes; Brayden Hamilton, student, OrchKids

03-03-2020

Two students who attended the El Sistema Seminario 2020, in Durham, NC last month, share their experiences at this super-gathering of student musicians from across North Carolina and the Southeast.

Inclusion through Tiered-Parts Music

Zachary Bush, Co-Founder, Leading Tones Music, LLC

02-04-2020

How to find repertoire that excites our students and invites inclusion of their many different skill levels? The Harmony Project Phoenix (HPP) has been exploring this question in the course of a several-year partnership with Arizona State University (ASU).

Harmonizing Across Many Languages

Ken MacLeod, President of New Brunswick Youth Orchestra & Founder of Sistema NB

02-04-2020

At Sistema New Brunswick (NB) on Canada’s east coast, we’ve recently faced a unique challenge with broad implications: How best to integrate students of disparate languages into one program? What began in 2009 with one centre and 50 children has grown to over 1,200 children daily, in ten locations, all learning and playing orchestral music. Until September 2019, however, all of these students worked in their own districts, using their own languages.

It (Still) Takes a Village

Krystle Ford, Metropolitan Youth Orchestra, Indianapolis, IN

01-07-2020

What does it mean to teach with a village mentality? This is what we do every day at the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra (MYO). Families learning alongside one another is at the core of our program.

Mourning and Honoring a Student Leader

Hermes Camacho, Program Manager, Austin Soundwaves, Austin, TX

01-07-2020

The hours, days, and weeks following the death of Draylen Mason at the hands of a serial bomber in March of 2018 are difficult to look back upon. To lose any student is indescribably tragic, but losing Dray was a deep and personal anguish to all of us at Austin Soundwaves (ASW); he was, and continues to be, the heart and soul of our El Sistema-inspired program. In mourning, we learned how much we at ASW depend on our students, sometimes leaning on them just as much as (or more than) they lean on us. Their strength was remarkable during that time, and the energy that typically fuels teenage intransigence was instead diverted two-fold into leading music-making and creating remembrances for Dray. We grieved and didn’t simply move on. And though it would have been easy to focus on the perniciousness of the circumstances, we felt a grave and humbling responsibility to persist in recognizing and commemorating Draylen’s growing legacy.

Sistema as School: WHIN’s Ways of Being

Charles Ortiz, Executive Director, WHIN Music Community Charter School

12-03-2019

As the world has seen El Sistema stretch far beyond the barrios of Venezuela, musicians, educators and citizen artists around the globe have been experimenting with how to use the principles and ideologies of Maestro Abreu in new and exciting ways. In northern Manhattan, that experiment takes the form of the WHIN (Washington Heights & Inwood) Music Community Charter School, an inclusive full-day charter founded on the principles of El Sistema.

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