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Between Tradition and Innovation: Reimagining Teacher Training at NEOJIBA

José Henrique de Campos, Educational Director, NEOJIBA

05-07-2025

When trying to renew an initiative that has existed for almost a decade, our great challenge is to find that precise balance between valuing tradition and proposing something new. At NEOJIBA State Nuclei for Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Bahia, this balance is fundamental to our continuous search for improvement—praising what already works, recognizing what can be improved, and having the tranquility to suggest something innovative without losing the essence of an idea.

It was in this spirit that in 2023, on a sunny afternoon during Bahia’s “eternal summer,” we began to redesign PROCEC, our collective teacher training program.

Brazil Celebrates Access to Music for All

04-02-2025

Post-Carnival, Brazil is showing no signs of slowing down in celebrating its rich musical and cultural diversity.

Trombone Shorty Builds Musical Ties between U.S. and Cuba

03-05-2025

Musicians wield powerful tools for strengthening diplomatic relations: their instruments.

EDITORIAL
Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of El Sistema Venezuela

Rodrigo Guerrero, Staff Specialist for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Babson College, Massachusetts, USA; former Associate Director of International Relations and Institutional Development, El Sistema Venezuela

02-05-2025

The Venezuela of 1975 is in sharp contrast to its current reality. Fifty years ago, the country was fully reconstructed after an oppressive military dictatorship and on track for economic growth. That was the context in which a young, brilliant composer and conductor, who also happened to be a gifted politician, used his combined talents to convince the government to support something that felt out of place to officialdom, but, in his vision, right at home.

Global Collaboration Reimagines Classic Song with an Important Message

12-11-2024

What’s better than true international collaboration? Over 100 musicians, educators, and students from five countries—Ghana, Rwanda, Panama, Morocco, and the United States—have reimagined the Tears for Fears song “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” with a new music video produced by non-profit Young Musicians Unite and the Playing for Change Foundation.

Beethoven in Cochabamba: The Power of Musician-Run Music Projects

Sergio Escalera, Bolivian pianist, composer, and arranger

11-06-2024

Something genuinely new in Bolivia’s classical music scene is happening here. The last decade has seen a new generation of enthusiastic Bolivian music students and teachers who are notably increasing the size of Bolivian audiences for classical music. As a result, self-managed orchestras have become commonplace not only in Cochabamba but across Bolivia.

Global Partnership Leads to Cosmic Collaboration

10-02-2024

The History of Latin Music at Carnegie Hall

10-02-2024

EDITORIAL
The Sound of the World

Anis Barnat, Co-founder, El Sistema Greece; Managing Director, Community Arts Network (CAN)

09-04-2024

National and international youth orchestra and choir festivals instill a collaborative mindset in their participants and provide all attendees with powerful, lasting memories. But they are time-consuming to organize, requiring logistical know-how and well-considered, family-flexible safeguarding policies for the children and young people. It’s not only tiring; it’s expensive. And program leaders know firsthand that students progress with or without these national or international festivals. So why bother? What do they offer to young people that their own programs can’t provide?

My answer, in a word: perspective.

The Citizens of the World Festival

Lauren Rausch, YOLA National Festival Violin Faculty

09-04-2024

For the last eight years, I’ve coached violinists for the YOLA National Festival. Each summer, it is a remarkable thing to walk into the first sectional on the first day and witness an exceptional level of preparation from 18 violinists who, for the most part, don’t know each other and have never played together—a group of students that have made a commitment to each other before even meeting one another. This is what defines the YOLA National Festival: the dedication and integrity of all participants, a spirit that lives in the YNF students and also in the staff and the incredible faculty who return each summer. It is a special and profoundly devoted community, something I have not witnessed elsewhere.

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